Moving Consciously: Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch [eBook ed.] 025208098X, 9780252080982

Citation preview

Edited with essays by

Sondra Fraleigh

Moving Consciously Somatic Transformations through Dance, Yoga, and Touch

Moving Consciously

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Moving Consciously somatic transformations through dance, yoga, and touch Edited with Essays by

Sondra Fraleigh

University of Illinois Press Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield

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© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-­free paper. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943603 isbn 978-0-252-03940-9 (hardcover) isbn 978-0-252-08098-2 (paperback) isbn 978-0-252-09749-2 (e-book)

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We dedicate our book to the still evolving field of somatic studies—to its visionaries and its future.

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Invisible threads are the strongest ties. —Friedrich Nietzsche Where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. —Joseph Campbell

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Contents

List of Illustrations   ix Acknowledgments  xi Introduction  xiii Prologue on Somatic Contexts  xix Part One: On Somatic Movement Arts

1. Why Consciousness Matters   3 Sondra Fraleigh 2. Somatic Movement Arts  24 Sondra Fraleigh 3. Dancing Becomes Walking  50 Sondra Fraleigh Part Two: Soma and Change

4. Living Shin  75 Catherine A. Schaeffer 5. Environments for Self-­Learning   93 Kelly Ferris Lester 6. Trauma in the Theater of the Body   109 Richard Biehl 7. Radical Somatics  124 Hillel Braude 8. Somatic Awakenings  135 Ruth Way

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Part three: Performing Consciously

9. Like Drifting Snow My Head Falls   153 Robert Bingham 10. Performing Body as Nature   164 Alison East 11. Embodied Dreams  180 Jeanne Schul 12. Contact Unwinding  195 Karin Rugman Dance Maps: A Guide for Dance Experiences  213 Glossary: Key Terms, Methods, and Narratives of Somatics  227 Bibliography  231 Contributors  241 Index  245

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Illustrations

1. Sondra Fraleigh works with Ruth Way on a reaching pattern

xxv

2. Angi Graff in the hurdler from Land to Water Yoga

xxvi

3. Rainbow bridge from Land to Water Yoga

8

4. Angi Graff in “Soft-­Skin Sandstone Butoh” in Snow Canyon, Utah

13

5. An example of matching hands in somatic bodywork

18

6. Christina Sears Etter at the Eastwest Tuscan Sun Retreat

25

7. Akane Storey in a depth-­movement dance

25

8. Kay Nelson matching the affective dynamics of her grandson

32

9. Sondra Fraleigh matches a student’s walk, floating his head upward

33

10. Sondra Fraleigh leads “Plant Us Butoh” at the Kayenta Labyrinth

51

11. “Plant Us Butoh” at the Kayenta Labyrinth in Utah

57

12. “Plant Us Butoh” at the Kayenta Labyrinth in Utah

58

13.

76

Catherine Schaeffer

14. “Lucid Dream Dance” by Catherine Schaeffer

87

15. “Soul Descending” by Catherine Schaeffer

88

16. Kelly Ferris dances “Heaps of Three” by Rebecca McArthur

94

17. Kelly matches the toes through touch

99

18. Richard Biehl in “Warrior Two” from Hatha Yoga

110

19. Amy Bush in “Dune,” an environmental dance in Snow Canyon

118

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20. Angi Graff in “Dune”

121

21. Nathalie Guillaume and Joan Englander practice matching

131

22. Ruth Way in a self-­tracing forward curl

143

23. Ruth Way and Pat Barker exchanging pebbles

148

24. Robert Bingham in “Feeding the Ghosts”

154

25. Alison East in “How Being Still Is Still Moving”

165

26. The ecological soma revealed through the film Anima

169

27. Alison East in “Rock Improvisation”

172

28. Jeanne Schul in “Invisible Container” in Santa Barbara

182

29. Karin Rugman in a depth-­movement dance process

196

30. Ruth Way and Aliki Chiotaki in a Contact Unwinding improvisation 197 31. Sondra Fraleigh teaches somatic bodywork in her workshop Archetypes of Transformation 12/12/12

214

32. Ashley Meeder in her “Dance for Georgia O’Keeffe”

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33. Back-­to-­back exploration in a dance by Catherine Schaeffer

218

34. Wind-­made and human-­made patterns

220

35. Norianna Diesel Potts in “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh”

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36. Sondra Fraleigh at age seventy-­three

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Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without prior developments in somatic practices evolving over the last century and into this one. The field of movement somatics is relatively new, especially developed by pioneers in therapeutic modalities, movement analysis, dance education, dance and theater performance, and philosophy. We are happy to be able to contribute our perspective to this already multi-­vocal field. Our Shin Somatics® work at the Eastwest Somatics Institute, now in its twenty-­fifth year, arrives on the wings of Moshe Feldenkrais, F. M. Alexander, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Barbara Clark, Margaret H’Doubler, Rudolph von Laban, Mary Starks Whitehouse, Mary Wigman, and many others. Our perspectives draw on both Eastern and Western sources. Thus we thank our many friends in Japan and India for the roles they have played in the development of Shin Somatics. We speak more specifically of shin in our text and how Ohno Yoshito, one of the founders of butoh, inspired our use of this term. We are especially grateful for the careful reading of our text by Martha Eddy and Becky Dyer. Their commentary and critique greatly enhance and clarify the book. We also thank our families for their support on this collective journey and our many, many friends in somatic studies worldwide.

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Introduction

Somatic movement experiences have the potential to extend consciousness and transform lives; this is the core of our teaching through Eastwest Somatics Institute and the theme of this book. As editor, I have asked the coauthors and myself what we want to achieve in this anthology. In retrospect, I see that we study the term somatics and explain our discoveries in applying it to movement through dance, yoga, and touch. We hope to share our findings with a wide audience of somatic practitioners, dancers, yoginis, hands-­on educators, and bodywork therapists. The text will also be of interest to those who study movement and consciousness, especially those who want to know more about benefits of somatic processes. This text aims toward integration of practice (doing) and theory (explanatory principles). It also examines somatic movement experiences through the lens of phenomenology, but not exclusively. Autobiographical narrative and life stories elucidate the text, as well as research in psychology and dreams, yoga and trauma, neurobiology and kinesthesia. We employ phenomenology as a definitional method and as the study of experience, which we explain in various contexts. It holds that experience itself is a kind of bodily knowing that can be articulated. As inseparable from experience, movement is a wordless medium that gives us access to the life-­world. Living things move. Even amoebas reach out, flow, and change. Like dance, movement is a sign for life and, in itself, a fundamental form of expression. Our book presents authors who have studied at Eastwest, including editorial assistants Ruth Way and Catherine Schaeffer, who have further investigated somatics through several leading schools. People who have had varied experiences with somatic studies often take these into unusual settings. When I began to create my own somatics program, I wanted it to be inclusive enough for anyone who wished to work through somatic means, not just dancers. My career had been in fields of dance and theater, but I wanted to expand my view of the values of dance and movement for everyone, and I wanted to be open to other schools of thought as I worked. My learning continues with this book through its very capable authors and somatic practitioners from a diversity of occupations encompassing dance and theater, expressive arts and group dynamics, philosophy, ecology, education, medical ethics, yoga, police work, public service, and Jungian Psychology.

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The purpose of having multiple authors is to provide several viewpoints on somatic studies and experiences. All of the authors have studied with Sondra Fraleigh as well as with other somatic teachers, and they have experienced somatic modes widely, as evident in their chapters. It is not the purpose of this book to present the full work of Eastwest Somatics Institute or all of our Shin Somatics® methods. We seek a wider definition of somatics than one school can represent. Selected key terms and methods of somatics and Shin Somatics are provided in the glossary. The authors of this book bring their own experience and expertise to an understanding of somatic studies and practices. Some include personal experiences in learning or healing. Some are more autobiographical in identifying life changes through somatic realizations. Several are university professors in fields of dance, performance, and somatics, having studied movement widely. All of them continue to study the evolving field of somatics. Several are adept practitioners of somatic bodywork as will become apparent. The authors’ independent research also supports their writing. Most of the authors are certified as somatic movement educators and therapists through Eastwest Somatics Institute and the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). Some hold certification in yoga through Yoga Alliance. Eastwest Institute is a Registered Yoga School with Yoga Alliance and a member school of ISMETA. Short biographies of the authors appear at the end of the book. Authors situate their work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, New Zealand, Japan, and India, bringing their international experiences to this project. In part 1, “On Somatic Movement Arts,” Sondra Fraleigh envisions somatics as a growing field of study and practice in three chapters. Her first, “Why Consciousness Matters,” discusses consciousness, or more accurately “extending whole body consciousness,” as the core purpose of somatic studies. She also takes up issues of dualistic language surrounding philosophies of embodiment in somatic practices. In “Somatic Movement Arts,” she provides an extensive definition of movement-­based somatic practices, also explaining her own approach. Her third chapter, “Dancing Becomes Walking,” speaks to her personal transformations in developing Shin Somatics® through study of several forms of yoga, the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education, craniosacral therapy, and Zen mindfulness. Fraleigh writes of finding ways to introduce somatic concepts into her teaching of dance and yoga in university and community settings. As she explains, her travels in Japan and India inspire much of the “East” in the Eastwest name. Her mental travels also play a key role in her work, in particular her forty-­year study of existential phenomenology, with resulting publications on philosophy, aesthetics, dance, and consciousness. Fraleigh’s involvement in butoh, a postmodern dance form that began in Japan, has taught her about its somatic basis, which she also takes up in chapter

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3. From its inception, Japanese butoh grew internationally as a surprising aesthetic blend of East and West, one of its attractions for Fraleigh. She has been a butoh enthusiast since 1985, a butoh performer and teacher, and has written three books on this art and its Japanese backgrounds. Chapter 3 is a narrative of Fraleigh’s entry into the somatics field, as well as a partial autobiography of her individual development as a performer, teacher, and author. She is professor emeritus at the State University of New York, College at Brockport, and founding director of Eastwest Somatics Institute, which features the Shin Somatics methods of moving consciously. In part 2, “Soma and Change,” chapter 4, “Living Shin,” Catherine Schaeffer traces the influence of somatic studies on her life and work. She writes about life changes in relation to several somatic practices. She reflects on her history in somatic modalities of Ideokinesis, Laban, Keleman, and Hanna, their relation to Shin Somatics, and how somatic studies has benefitted her professionally and personally. She considers applications of somatic knowledge to dance pedagogy, creating choreography, visual art, healing, and wellness. Schaeffer has published several articles on somatics and is the recipient of a Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award from her university. She choreographs and performs internationally. In chapter 5, “Environments for Self-­Learning,” Kelly Ferris Lester draws from the pedagogical philosophies of Howard Gardner and Paulo Freire as a means to define self-­learning in somatic contexts. Her discussion includes approaches to facilitate self-­learning through various somatic experiences and classrooms, including online learning. Educators often refer to the facilitation of self-­learning as a principle of student-­centered learning. Freire, a pedagogy theorist and philosopher, refers to this approach as humanizing pedagogy or problem-­posing pedagogy that expresses the consciousness of the students themselves. Ferris Lester writes that in somatics the focus is always on the individual having the experience. The experience may be slightly different from practice to practice (or lesson to lesson), but the essence is the discovery (or rediscovery) of the wisdom of the self. Also certified in Bill Evans Method of Teaching Dance, she examines the transformative somatic principles at work in his teaching of dance technique. Ferris Lester has served on the board of directors of ISMETA in New York City and is a teacher-­trainer for Eastwest Somatics Certification Programs. Richard Biehl writes in chapter 6, “Trauma in the Theater of the Body,” about his teaching of somatic yoga for relief of trauma, supporting this with current research on post-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and including parts of his own story with PTSD. Biehl has been practicing yoga since 1992 and has studied with Beryl Bender Birch, Mukunda Styles, Mark Whitwell, and Sondra Fraleigh. He expands his bodily pursuits through an active intellectual life, particularly appreciative of Joseph Campbell’s work. Biehl currently teaches a somatic yoga class in Dayton, Ohio—where he is a public safety officer and chief of police

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with a career spanning the late 1970s to the present. Throughout this time, he has maintained an interest and study of Eastern mindfulness practices as well as Western sports. He is a martial arts practitioner with a Fourth Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. Biehl has also been a competitive powerlifter with certification as a class 3 powerlifter in the United States Powerlifting Federation. Drawing on his perspectives from medical ethics, neurology, phenomenology, and somatics, Dr. Hillel Braude contributes chapter 7, “Radical Somatics.” He proposes that somatics practice directly affects the precognitive sensibility of the other. The transformative power of somatics derives from a practitioner’s ability to touch the deep recesses of precognitive cellular states of being. This concept of “somatics affecting” is adapted from phenomenology, in particular Edmund Husserl’s notion of kinesthesia, Maurice Merleau-­Ponty’s study of perception, and Emmanuel Levinas’s emphasis on ethical responsibility. Rather than purely seeking intellectual understanding or enlightenment, somatics is concerned with intersubjective categories of the flesh, such as witnessing the self and the other, and alleviation of suffering. Through bringing to presence the precognitive sensible foundations of embodied life, Braude argues that somatics, especially through kinesthesia, provides a means of bridging the distinct realms of phenomenology and neuroscience. Finally, he illustrates the transformative potential of somatic affecting through a comparison with the social neuroscience understanding of empathy. This chapter is influenced by Braude’s work as a Feldenkrais practitioner, his studies with Sondra Fraleigh, and his backgrounds and publications in medicine and philosophy. Ruth Way tells in chapter 8, “Somatic Awakenings,” the story of her transformative passage through the very illuminating terrain of somatic studies, and she discusses the influences of somatic practices in performance. Her chapter addresses soma and change while providing a bridge to topics of performance in part 3. Through her extensive career as a professional dancer, filmmaker, and choreographer, and as an educator and researcher, she speaks to the ways performance can be conceived, and to somatic reverberations in performance. Way also discusses how her study of somatics has directly influenced her personally and in all of her roles as an artist and educator. Ruth Way is associate head of the School for Performing Arts at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, and with Russell Frampton she is codirector of Enclave Productions developing dance and art films, which to date have been screened in France, Russia, Estonia, Australia, Poland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. Chapter 9, Robert Bingham’s “Like Drifting Snow My Head Falls,” opens part 3, “Performing Consciously.” Bingham writes about the somatic activity of imaging, which has played an important role in his engagement with dance and performance. What is the feeling in the body as images arise in the mind? What stories do these images tell? Through a first-­person phenomenological narrative, this chapter considers the somatic dimensions of mental imaging. It

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confronts the fickle, unpredictable nature of images and, at the same time, their affinity with somatic awakenings. Further, it taps into image as plentiful resource for bringing the body’s voice to the page and to dance. Bingham has performed with several New York–based companies and artists, and for over a decade traveled regularly to India, where he studied dance, yoga, and meditation. Bingham also performed and taught in India. He is a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University in Philadelphia and received a Fulbright Award to study and perform in Berlin, Germany, in 2013. The author of chapter 10, “Performing Body as Nature,” Alison East examines the significance of the body as part of its natural environment, writing of sensuous interfaces and somatic presence of the body as nature. As a dancer, educator, and ecologist, her broader interests reside in how dancers might foster human connections with the earth, other somas, and eco-­socio-­political concerns. East is a dance artist and educator; a teacher of choreography, somatics, and dance ethnography; and currently chair of the Dance Studies Program at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is often an invited scholar and guest teacher in university programs internationally, and she has taught and traveled widely in India. Dr. Jeanne Schul contributes chapter 11, “Embodied Dreams.” She looks into somatic practices with dream images from the perspective of Jungian psychology. Dreaming, she says, is a natural brain function, but for some of us, dreamtime brings powerful somatic experiences. Images that haunt us long after the visual stimulus has disappeared are often very vivid somatic sensations that rush through our bodies and shock us into an awareness of psychic processes at work. Schul draws archetypal wisdom from dreams. She speaks of how somatic practices address these in relation to seven energy centers of the body called chakras in yoga, as she provides a somatic method for dancing the chakras. Schul has published numerous articles and presented workshops nationally that focus on the intersection of dance, the chakras, and dreams. She holds a PhD in depth psychology and is also a dance specialist in fine arts at Berry College in Georgia. Karin Rugman’s chapter, “Contact Unwinding,” examines kinesthetic correspondence and matching in Contact Unwinding, a Shin Somatics dance process similar to Contact Improvisation, but with significant differences. Rugman discusses how the practice of Contact Unwinding interweaves dance and somatics, inviting the inner self to instinctively express itself outwardly. She explains how the intuitive process employs movement-­based teaching through touch. One partner touches and guides the movement of the other and supports its spontaneous emergence. Rugman enjoys freedom and pleasure in the process, she says, “moving naturally from an uncluttered place.” She reports that her students shed habits and limiting inhibitions in this process, since they are not guarded by repetitive dance patterns from rote memory. With practice, students achieve ease and fluidity in Contact Unwinding, and these somatic values carry over into

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their dances and choreography. Rugman’s research feeds directly into undergraduate study at her university. Her students are introduced to the foundations of somatic practice, developing an understanding of kinesthetic awareness in dance technique, performance, and choreography. Rugman is senior lecturer at Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom, where she has established somatics studies in the Dance Department. The final text section consists of Dance Maps, user-­friendly maps that present simple structures for dance experiences that anyone can follow. Designed for those who want to claim the dancer within, from the professional dancer to the novice, the maps are intended to be guides that spark creative uses of transformational dance somatics. To be effective, explorations need to be simple and at the same time present challenges. Several authors of this book provide examples. Teachers of dance in somatic contexts can engage in community building through exploring choreographic and improvisational structures based on Dance Maps, and they can learn through these examples how to make their own maps. Ruth Way and artist Russell Frampton have produced a dance film that accompanies this book, not duplicating it, but breathing life into words through the medium of film. The film, Viridian, helps capture somatically inspired dance experiences in the studio and in various digitized architectural environments. In her chapter, Way also speaks of how somatics applies in the making of films. The film is available through Enclave Productions in the United Kingdom (http:// rframpton.wix.com/enclave) and can be uploaded from this Enclave Productions link: http://rframpton.wix.com/enclave#!viridian/cs46.

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Prologue on Somatic Contexts Sondra Fraleigh The uses of moving consciously in somatic contexts may have more applications than we have yet been able to see. As Heidegger said, “Greater than actuality stands possibility.”1 The authors of this book hope to inspire others in somatic studies to a large vision of its possibilities. There has been much that seeks to revision the way we think about movement and the arts. Dance somatics had unsung beginnings in the Judson dance activities that ushered in the American postmodern dance. The idea that everyone can dance was expressed at Judson, where they also decelerated extant techniques. New dance techniques were born of course, but that required a conscious rethinking of the values of dancing and what might count as art. The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training, edited by Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-­Fiol, takes this up.2 Our book asks what might count as somatic; what fundamentally is somatics, and what are its potentials as a field of practice and knowledge, especially in terms of human development. We also address transformation in the belief that consciousness is malleable, that it can’t be forced, and that positive change comes naturally through cultivation of bodily awareness. We are concerned with movement-­based somatics, which bridges experiential anatomy, developmental patterns, dance, performance, yoga, and facilitation through touch. In a larger framework, we could call somatic uses of touch tactile or kinetic communication—or, categorically, hands-­on somatic therapy and education. Somatics continues to develop touch techniques in major forms of somatic bodywork, even as many practices resist the term bodywork. (“Are we fixing cars?”) Moshe Feldenkrais called his approach to movement with touch Functional Integration®. At Eastwest Somatics Institute, we develop methods such as teaching through touch, matching through movement and touch, and flow repatterning. Shin Somatics® identifies our style of bodywork, as we explain further in various contexts and in the glossary. We have developed Land to Water Yoga, a unique somatic practice related to flow repatterning and infant movement development, also explored in the text. As in other somatic practices, this yoga is adaptable to a variety of populations and also extends to those in recovery. Movement somatics is not just for adept movers, but can benefit people with disabilities in particular. The focus for adepts and those with challenges is often the same, directing consciousness toward “ability.” What can the person do well, and how can they draw on their abilities to bring better balance and functioning to the whole? “People can always

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succeed at something,” says renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has faced long years of extreme physical challenges.3 Beyond dance performance, other beneficial applications of somatic movement modes include community programs for youths at risk, movement for recovery from addiction, and trauma recovery. Sometimes these contexts require specialized degrees. In St. George, Angela Graff (LCSW and Shin Somatics®) teaches a successful somatic yoga and dance program for women in recovery from addiction. She appears in figure 2 in this prologue and also in figures 4 (chapter 1) and 20 (chapter 6). Somatic practices don’t necessarily bring together concerns for movement patterning, dance, yoga, and somatically motivated bodywork, but they can, as we do at Eastwest. Collectively, we speak of these as somatic movement arts, and surely there could be more. Tai Chi comes to mind, for instance. We use the term art in its wide meaning as skillful action and expression. The results might be qualitatively beautiful or beautifully ugly, since art has many manifestations. Movements made special through care would most aptly describe somatic movement arts—where artful actions are carefully cultivated, not for show, but for the benefit of individuals and communities. Most tellingly for somatics, art reaches beyond the ordinary while embracing the familiar, and matters of perception are crucial in both somatics and art. Somatics is clearly distinct in its intersection with art, however. The body is the affective and conscious medium for somatic movement and perception, as we explain in several ways. The intersection of science with art is also important in somatic contexts, as we will see.

Soma and Perception We define somatics throughout this book, somewhat in a spiral path, starting at the center with soma and expanding out toward practice. The word somatics is very broad, but its etymological root is narrow, pointing toward the ancient Greeks and their word soma: (1) the body, and (2) the body regulated from within. I learn from Aliki Chiotaki, a practitioner and scholar of somatics, that soma in both ancient and modern Greek refers simply to the organic physical body and that σώμα και ψυχή means body and soul (or psyche).4 Greeks use both words, soma and psyche, to convey a living essence, and never the word soma alone, Chiotaki says. Psyche is the triplicate unity that Plato posits as soul-­spirit-­mind, not separate from body, and Aristotle explains as vital life principle. For him soul (as psyche) is not a precious spiritual entity; it is part of aliveness in everything, also animating the “patterned energy” of art.5 Soma by itself is inadequate as the Greek root definition of the field of somatics. In this work, we use soma inclusively with the understanding that soma in its aliveness includes psyche in its fullness. Hyphenation of soma-­psyche would do this, and not too oddly. But it would be awkward to use this construction repeatedly and might produce an unintended dualism. Thus we refer to varied

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meanings and layers of soma in English while respecting its origins in Greek. In addition to English interpretations of soma from the Greek in meanings 1 and 2 above, this text interprets soma inclusively as embodied conscious awareness, including (3) the body perceived by the self, (4) the experience of body, self, and otherness, and also (5) body as nature in lived experience. In application, the unity of soma and psyche makes it possible to commit to a bodily action or emotion, Chiotaki says. This text seeks to illuminate what happens in the psychic, somatic life of movement. The standpoint or perceptual vantage makes a difference. We can focus awareness on self or self in relation, but in any case, we exist relative to others, even the seeming otherness of the world. We are not alone even when we feel isolated or decide to retire from others. We carry experiences of otherness within. Those lacking a store of such experiences as repository in consciousness we typically call narcissists, and in pathological cases of lack of empathy, sociopaths. Social skills and emotional intelligence develop gradually in infancy and childhood through effective associations as we learn how to be with others. An Eastern perspective on this asserts even more that we are not alone, and neither are we separate. Yoga means union. Shin denotes oneness, as I take up in chapter 3. We see through developments in neurobiology that soma also designates the elusive body of the precognitive self, as I take up in chapter 1 and Hillel Braude considers further in chapter 7. Among its biological uses, soma refers to the cellular, watery, organic state of the body. At the precognitive level, which we might think of as “before thought,” soma provides the condition for perception, and also self-­perception as somatically founded in bodily experience. Perception is a neurological process with a cellular background. As a topic and as a process, perception is vast as it underlies powers of observation and interpretation. Perception informs consciousness; it is key to understanding somatic movement and its possible modes, which this book takes as a definitional project. The word movement delimits this project, since the field of somatic practices is wide, involving psychology and somatic models of leadership, which are both outside the scope of our inquiry, except where they overlap concerns for bodily expression and effective communication in somatic movement practices.

Perception, Intention, and Expression A phenomenological definition of somatics moves behind assumed views and toward intention, a major category of study in philosophical phenomenology, especially associated with concerns for perception and consciousness. For the time being, let’s say that somatic movement has two major features. First, it is intentionally structured around perceptual phenomena. Relative to this, it is also interpreted through perceptual phenomena.

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Perception does not refer to sight alone, but to all the senses. A phenomenon is a thing—any concrete form, or an object of the mind, a visible shape either still or moving, a self-­moving kinesthetic sensation, a rough or supportive touch, discernable qualities of a dance, a feeling or emotion—to name just a few things that we might call phenomena. As sentient happenings in conscious life, perceptions are also phenomena, quite often directed through intention. Phenomenology teaches that perception is not a passive process. What we pay attention to influences what we see and hear. Activity shapes intention and perception, and vice versa. Consciously undertaken movements in dance and yoga, as also in games and sports, are part of a powerful loop of intention and perception. Movement is not something we do nearly so much as what we are, and harbinger to what we can become. Merleau-­Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1962) was one of the first books on phenomenology to take up the study of perception as a central theme. He saw the body as a primal form of expression. The body is already and always expressing something as the condition for communion with others in an intersubjective field of awareness.6 Somatics as a field has focused much attention on self and self-­awareness. Our contention in this book is that the intersubjective field relative to self, others, and community is also an important and often overlooked facet of somatics. Structurally, communities cohere through common backgrounds and activities. In our Dance Maps chapter, we see how somatic movement events can build community interactively through playful, artful means. As concerns somatic movement practices and experiences, perception is sensory precursor to affective life and cognitive insight. Presentational and reflective knowledge in somatic education build from there, as Kelly Ferris Lester shows in her chapter. Affective life, reflective introspection, presentational knowing, practical know-­how, and conceptual intellect are all rooted in sensitivities of perception and awareness, and can be realized in an array of bodily responsive somatic movement practices. Perception is preverbal and subject to intention, as we reiterate in several ways. It is global, immediate, and nonlinear. If somatic movement practices focus more on pre-­linguistic perceptual knowing, that doesn’t mean that they neglect language and conceptualization. The matter of conscious intention is an overarching one. Somatic practitioners don’t just place their hands on people and hope for good results. They use skillful methods and direct their intentions consciously. Somatic intention is directed intention involving conscious use. Continuous interaction between an organism and its environment allows the organism to survive and grow. Perceptual activity of the voluntary somatic nervous system allows individuals to receive sensory information as they consciously react to others and environmental changes. Not all movement is so consciously undertaken. Our everyday functioning depends on movement that has become automatic, or we could say “second nature.” We couldn’t function at all if we had to think

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about every movement we make. Somatic movement practices, however, are deliberately undertaken. They are voluntary and, as such, subject to control of the somatic nervous system. At the same time, we recognize the large meaning of soma and psyche as defining the whole body, and that involuntary movements also have affective somatic bases. We delimit voluntary intentional movement as the starting point for somatic studies. If movement has involuntary aspects, cellular and visceral, at least we start first with intentional use. Intention depends on what neurobiologist Antonio Damasio calls the subjective “self-­as-­knower,” arising, nevertheless, from the objective “material me.”7 Without self-­as-­knower, there is no intentional consciousness. In cases where somatic practitioners attempt to access involuntary systems of the body or to work with the unconscious through images, dreams, or in dance, the attempt to render the unconscious conscious is intentional. Habitual movement is also unconscious and involuntary to a large degree. What is taken for granted as unexamined in our movement can rise to the level of intentional use, as we take up in several ways. When we pay attention to a limiting habit, we have the possibility of changing it. Two very central somatic disciplines, the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method®, have well-­ developed approaches for working with bodily habits and awareness, providing more options in movement as in life.

Somatic Context Whether we understand movement to be somatic or not depends on the intention of the mover and on the context in which the movement appears. Dance is movement, to be sure, but it is more than movement, because its many forms are aesthetically and culturally constructed. When it is taught or practiced from a somatic point of view, dance takes on a set of values associated with perceptual knowledge, also including aesthetic and cultural experience. Somatic yoga is based in movement and perceptual knowledge as well, and not simply in postures. The entire field of somatic practice may be understood in light of human development. Indeed, somatics is never simply about working with a tight psoas muscle; rather, it is concerned with the whole person. How could it not be, if movement infuses life and is important to healthy development? Because of its foundational pervasiveness and developmental importance, infant movement forms the bedrock of much movement-­based somatics. My primary teacher in the Feldenkrais work, Frank Wildman, taught evolutionary movement patterns structured around life forms, from simple to more complex and with the brain as a center for strength, not just gray matter for thinking. We cannot assume that bodywork is always somatic. Bodywork can refer to applied body mechanics, to massage, or any number of practices. In somatically undertaken bodywork, experiential values and human development are at the

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center. Tactile kinesthetic communication is a major part of somatic movement arts, and these can be explained differently in various somatic programs. Our mode of bodywork at Eastwest conceives touch as an art of listening, and it develops somatic bodywork as a way of teaching through touch. We see that the bodyworker and the recipient are in a listening relationship through qualities of touch, and that the one who touches is also being touched. Both are being moved through touch. Haptic sensibility (touch) meets aural sensibility through kinetic pathways. Touch and movement blend together in an attitude of listening. Somatic sensibility and perceptual training guide somatic bodywork in all of the modes we are acquainted with. Unlike massage, most somatic contexts for bodywork don’t use muscular friction, nor are they primarily concerned with manipulating the muscles. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body-­Mind Centering conceives bodywork systemically, often exploring each system separately, with special attention to the organs and cellular movement.8 In Shin Somatics bodywork, we are interested in how the body moves and can improve through tactile or kinesthetic experiences, and we often use movement repatterning and imagery as a means toward that end. Figure 1 shows a moment of repatterning involving tactile guidance in the turn of the torso and a reach. Figure 2 uses the same sitting base and turn, but is solo movement with a downward orientation. Perception as precursor to consciousness is key to somatic bodywork outcomes. Whether bodywork counts as somatic or not depends on the context in which it is undertaken, as well as the intentions of the practitioner. Is she intending to work with the muscles in order to provide relief through tapping and stroking as in massage, or is she working to affect conscious awareness of the moving self? Massage and somatic bodywork have very little in common. The skills are distinct. Massage therapists learn how to stimulate the muscles in various ways from a settled position. The face cradle immobilizes the body for this purpose. Somatic bodyworkers guide people through movement patterns and positions to facilitate wellness. They are also interested in developing awareness through movement and imagination. Somatic bodywork is done clothed and often emphasizes moving through space. A session might culminate in some fundamental movement pattern that shows the client and facilitator what has been learned or what has improved. This is easily accomplished through walking, for instance. A session could begin and end with walking to see if the student senses a difference. Or the session could begin with a dance phrase and end with the same phrase to reflect on possible improvements. The focus of a somatic bodywork lesson (or session) depends on the needs and wishes of the student or client. It is always assumed that something is being learned that can be reviewed verbally, or danced or painted. Somatic bodywork is creative and unpredictable. Lessons don’t follow standard formulas, even when they evolve out of general lesson plans or well-­defined developmental movement patterns.

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Backgrounds of Shin Somatics® Shin Somatics identifies the somatic style and movement methods that I have created in my practice. Shin is a Japanese and Chinese word that indicates oneness of body, mind, spirit, and soul, and it has other metaphysical meanings. I speak directly to Shin and how I came to choose this word in chapter 3. This book hopes to extend the definition of somatics beyond my work and the work of the Eastwest Somatics Institute, while taking account of it. Somatic practices have accomplished a great deal since the early 1900s, but there is more to be explored. Somatic approaches to dance have been growing in popularity in the public sector and academe through the applications of several innovators, including Martha Eddy, Don Hanlon Johnson, Seymour Kleinman, Anna Halprin, Andrea Olsen, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. I began my own work in somatics in the 1980s as a professor of dance at the State University of New York, College at Brockport. In 1990 I established Eastwest Somatics Institute to further somatic movement studies in dance, yoga, and bodywork. Now retired from university teaching, I still teach independently through my institute based

Figure 1. Sondra Fraleigh guides Ruth Way through a reaching pattern in somatic bodywork. This dancerly reach includes a twist through the torso with the legs in hurdler position. The dancer might imagine a leap leaning on the air with her legs “flying” in this position. Photograph © 2009 by Darby Ann Balling.

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Figure 2. Angi Graff in the hurdler from Land to Water Yoga. This position is similar to the bodywork example in figure 1, except that Angi turns her torso farther, looks down, and touches the floor with both hands. This dancelike yoga position stretches the hamstrings of the extended leg and the inside line of the bent leg, while taking the entire torso into a satisfying twist, challenging the pelvic floor, the ribs, and shoulder girdle. People of all ages can do this, even as some may need to loosen the twist by touching only the back hand to the floor. Somatic yoga encourages adjustments so that everyone can be successful. Photograph © 2010 by Sondra Fraleigh.

in St. George, Utah. Several Shin Somatics teachers and associates assist me in offering workshops and retreats internationally. Few university dance curricula included somatics when I added it at SUNY. I developed transformational dance somatics there in my last fifteen years as a professor. The term somatics was not widely used when I published Dance and the Lived Body in 1987.9 Others have since pointed to the conceptual basis of that book as somatic—remembering its themes of dance and self, and dance and the other, as a phenomenology of dance from the dancer’s point of view. The subjective theme, body and self, and intersubjective theme, body and other, which form the ground swell of that book, are major somatic topics. Dance, after all, is not simply self-­expression; rather, it urges one past the limits of self. In my

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current work and practice, I understand how somatic awareness also moves one past self-­limits. In repeating ourselves, we repeat our habits and limitations. We heal by somehow moving beyond these. In light of today’s views, Dance and the Lived Body now seems limited in its somatic outlook, speaking primarily to dance as art and theater performance. This book in your hands assumes that dance is a much wider participatory activity, with transformative healing potentials. Dance is for all who desire to move expressively, with rhythm, or in the spirit of the moment. Dance is global and primal, not just for those who train to perform on stage. As somatic innovator Gabrielle Roth liked to say: “If you have a body, you are a dancer.” Moving Consciously is the first comprehensive account of the uses and influences of movement-­based somatics through dance, yoga, and touch, and the most extensive published account of Shin Somatics. Many dancers and teachers of dance learned the methods of movement and touch that sustain the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method®. These modalities are still evolving internationally in their influence on dance in higher education. The Shin Somatics that I have developed is indebted to both. The present anthology has several roots and shares much with other somatic practices. Through its several authors, it is about moving consciously and why consciousness matters in movement. Using a variety of perspectives on movement and dance somatics, our book presents the benefits of experiencing self and others through sensory awareness, movement integration, and intuitive dance as vital means toward mental and physical health. Two books also take up significant themes in dance somatics: Dance, Somatics, and Spiritualities, an anthology edited by Amanda Williamson and others, presents twenty influential teachers and dancers in the field of somatics; and Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation, by Glenna Batson with Margaret Wilson, is a comprehensive account of dance somatics and science focusing on dance as art and performance and the nature of affectivity. An earlier book, Wisdom of the Body Moving, by Linda Hartley provides an introduction to developmental movement patterning and to the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, drawing on animal and infant movements.10 Conscious embodiment as ongoing is central to Shin Somatics. Its methods of touch and movement reflect generative processes of conscious awareness, influencing fluid interconnections between sensation and thought, movement and expression. Indeed, the emerging literature on neurobiology and the plasticity of the brain aids the definition of consciousness in chapter 1. Educational principles also root Shin Somatics, including the importance of presentation and being witnessed as part of the learning cycle. Howard Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences, particularly kinesthetic learning, is important to transformational somatics, as Kelly Ferris Lester shows in chapter 5.

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Doing and Knowing: Integration of Practice and Theory Our book is about doing and knowing in relation, or integration of practice and theory. Moving is doing something, and it is more. Experience arises from the doings of consciously undertaken movement and can arrive as embodied knowledge. We don’t always have words for such experiential knowing, but we can try to say something about our experiences and how they change or transform us. Not everything needs to be said, of course. There are so many wordless dances to do. Some might be staged, but a somatic approach to dance opens us to the possible benefits of dance for all. This isn’t a new idea, but to put it into practice is another story. This is part of our story, and an important part of our book. As another part of our story, we address movement professionals and teachers, especially in examining somatic approaches to performance. Soma in performance has barely been touched upon, while somatic approaches to dance technique are continuing to grow in academe. We hope to produce a greater appreciation and deeper understanding of somatic approaches in movement arts including performance. In our perspective, we perform the body as a part of nature, even as we also understand the body’s social, cultural constructions. The final section provides maps for dance experiences, many conceived somatically for natural environments, with several conceived by eco-­dancer Alison East. Our Dance Maps can be done by anyone who wants to experience them. To augment our somatic venture both philosophically and culturally, we include Eastern perspectives on the body that are compatible with Western phenomenology and neurobiology. Antonio Damasio is particularly useful because of his ability to bridge science and philosophy, for his study of mental imagery as embodied, and his explanations of the evolutionary and therapeutic value of the arts.11 An import from the East through yoga and Zen, mindfulness meditation is included as a somatic resource that inspires and supports the moving body and the body at rest. Stillness makes movement possible. Authors in Moving Consciously who speak to meditation have had direct acquaintance with Eastern forms and Western variations. This book does not dwell on the historical development of somatics. Rather, it is more concerned with the future. Others have already written a great deal about the development of our field historically. The history of the somatic field of movement practices, or at least its beginning phases, is taken up by Don Hanlon Johnson in a book that all Eastwest Somatics students are asked to read: Bone, Breath, and Gesture.12 The term I’ve coined for movement-­based somatics is somatic movement arts, and chapter 2 of this book, “Somatic Movement Arts,” discusses a study of the history of somatics by Martha Eddy, who also heads a school of somatic studies through her dance background and certifications in Laban Movement Analysis and Body-­Mind Centering, having accomplished an original synthesis of these.

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Scope: Why Somatics and What Kind? As somatic studies continue to infuse dance and theater performance in higher education, there is a need for texts that move behind accepted definitions and practices of somatics. The use and promotion of Pilates as somatics for dance has been confusing the dance field for many years. Pilates is a popular body-­ conditioning program, sometimes mirroring dance movement and reinforcing the turned-­out hip position and geometrically extended body of ballet through repetitive movement and extensive equipment. Development of core strength is axiomatic in Pilates conditioning techniques. However, dance somatics is a very broad topic that exceeds body conditioning. Movement-­based somatic principles can be applied potentially to all facets of dance education and artistry. Body conditioning, training, and exercise programs are not the province of somatics. Perception and consciousness are essential, as is creativity, transformation, and change. To this I would add community building and service, though not everyone would agree. On a broad scale, awareness of the moving self in relation to others and in community is increasingly important to somatic studies. We don’t discount the value of exercise and repetitive movement in dance training, or the use of machinery. These have a place and purpose, but they are not somatic means. Moving consciously is the means of somatics. The goal is the same. Process is everything in somatics. We have been defining somatic areas of movement studies, which we take up extensively in this book. Somatic movement studies extend personal and professional practices in movement-­related fields and have implications for kinesthetic educational theory. The field of somatics as concerns movement and the body covers more than dance, yoga, and bodywork. Somatic movement also applies to administration and leadership, but it is largely outside the scope of our inquiry. The work and writing of Richard Strozzi-­Heckler is instructive in terms of movement somatics in leadership. In 2000, the Strozzi Institute introduced a coaching program including somatic approaches to movement and body. Strozzi Somatics is used in groups of up to a thousand people. It has contributed to U.S. military counterinsurgency training, integrating somatic practices to enhance soldiers’ abilities to connect with others without relying predominantly on force. Somatic psychology also uses movement and bodywork but is outside the scope of our study. Its manifestations are legion, often as extensions of depth psychology and Gestalt psychology, including the teaching of Fritz Pearls, Carl Jung, and Ida Rolph. Dance therapist Mary Whitehouse, who was influenced by Jung, relates somatic psychology to dance, providing an overt psychological link to movement-­based somatics as practiced at Eastwest Somatics and many other somatics schools. Psychology, as such, is not the focus for movement-­based somatics, however. Therapeutic uses of dance draw on expression and imagery in movement, including aspects of depth-­movement as represented by Jung

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and Whitehouse. At Eastwest, we have developed Depth-­Movement Dance (or Depth-­Movement Experience) as a means to incorporate insights from this field. We focus on expression and uses of imagery through intuitive dance improvisations, not on dance therapy as a profession, which has different guidelines for registration and practice. Yoga is a worldwide practice with many different forms, most branching out from Eastern sources in India. The teaching of yoga is recently being impacted by somatic principles. At Eastwest Somatics, we find important segues between dance and yoga, as you will find in this book. My Land to Water Yoga (2009), which is based on infant movement development, is perhaps the first attempt to draw together somatic practices of dance, yoga, and human development in a written account.13 The present book is both a guide to somatic yoga and a philosophical study of somatics. In chapter 3, “Dancing Becomes Walking,” I take up my yoga lineage, which has roots in my study in India and with U.S. teachers. Not all yoga is taught somatically. Yoga taught with high levels of technique and expectations of perfection can be hazardous if the individual capacities of the students are ignored and the teacher is demanding. Yoga is often radical in its twists and inversions. Somatic yoga asks how students can learn beneficial forms without stress. How can they learn from where they are and build capacity gradually, meeting challenges with confidence? We join other somatic practitioners who define somatics from the word soma, also extending the definition. There may be more to uncover in the arena of somatics than has yet been articulated. Our book develops a pluralistic view of dance and yoga, including uses of touch in somatics, but our mission is wider still. We address professional audiences in fields of embodied learning, and readers interested in relationships between consciousness and movement. notes 1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 63. 2. Melanie Bales and Rebecca Nettl-­Fiol, eds., The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008). 3. Hawking’s views on facing difficulties are presented in the movie A Theory of Everything, directed by James Marsh (Universal Studios, 2014). 4. Aliki Chiotaki, a native of Greece and currently a student of Shin Somatics, attended the University of Surry in the United Kingdom in somatic studies and holds an advanced certificate in Laban Movement Analysis. 5. See Katherine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Aesthetics (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972), 62–64. 6.  Maurice Merleau-­Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), ch. 6. 7. Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 2012), 10–11.

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prologue on somatic conte xts / xxxi 8. See Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s explorations of bodily systems in her book, Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-­Mind Centering (Northampton, Mass.: Contact Editions, 1993). 9. Sondra Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987). 10. Amanda Williamson, Glenna Batson, Sarah, Whatley, and Rebecca Weber, eds., Dance, Somatics, and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives (Bristol, U.K.: Intellect, 2014); Glena Batson with Margaret Wilson, Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation (Bristol, U.K.: Intellect, 2014); Linda Hartley, Wisdom of the Body Moving: An Introduction to Body-­Mind Centering (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1989). 11. Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 312–15. 12. Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995). 13. Sondra Fraleigh, Land to Water Yoga (New York: iUniverse, 2009).

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part one

On Somatic Movement Arts

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chapter 1

Why Consciousness Matters Sondra Fraleigh

Ethereal Dance In 2006, on one of my trips to Japan, butoh teacher Nobuo Harada-­sensei saw my somatics students practicing teaching through touch, our developmental and therapeutic technique that involves what we refer to as matching in pairs. One partner in the role of the teacher finds and guides the lines of least resistance in the other partner’s movement, matching emergent movement patterns with slow, gentle, somatically attuned touch—as in lifting an arm and holding it a few moments to feel the weight of flesh and bone, then waiting for release of held tension before letting the arm rest. This is one simple way to begin a series of phrases that eventually involve the whole body, somewhat unpredictably, since the practitioner learns about the student’s movement disposition along the way. As a tactile-­kinesthetic noninvasive form of bodywork practiced at Eastwest Somatics Institute, matching usually involves touch with movement, but it can also be done through a simple semblance of movement without touch, as in matching through walking, an example I take up in chapter 2. Learners frequently tap into untried and non-­habitual pathways, as they identify improvements in movement and understanding. Learning takes place through movement, not through dialogue, even as explanations may aid the total process. I thought Harada-­sensei wouldn’t understand what we were doing. We hadn’t yet met, and he wanted to see how I taught, because we were to teach a butoh dance workshop together, ending with an informal improvisational performance

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for the public. During tea, after his hour of observation, I asked him if he had enough understanding of my approach, even though he hadn’t seen me teach dance. “I saw the dance,” he said. “I saw the etheric dance.” So we smiled. We both understood the ethereal and elusive in butoh, as also in somatic practices. His remark reminded me of the subtle disposition of the Japanese, and why I like butoh, a dance form that appears in various contexts throughout this book. The notion of ethereality is sometimes ascribed to otherworldly or even ghostly qualities. Ether is the rarefied and disappearing element formerly believed to fill the heavens. It is also true that butoh—the postmodern dance movement arising in Japan after World War II, now with global adherents—sometimes appears otherworldly. One can work with an image of disappearance in butoh. To the outward eye, no one actually disappears, but the imagistic affect is nonetheless real for the dancer and the witness. The floating visage of the head and morphing facial expressions are often quite beautiful, even as the dancer’s knees softly bend, and she walks with an eternally slow pace, where with each tiny slide, the foot never leaves the ground. This would be the serene soma of butoh, and there are also more intense somatic affects, tumultuous, even explosive. Butoh has a somatic basis, but this is so of all dances because all movement has qualitative somaticity—smoothness, for instance, or bitterness—translating taste to movement imagistically. The question for somatics as a discrete study is whether one pays attention to somatic qualities and potentials. Contrasting subtle ethereal movement would be solid strongly delineated movement, restrained and earthy. We find some of these strong qualities in the invigorating stamping dances of India and Africa. African dances move with pelvic power and are seductive, having a somatic influence on performers and witnesses alike. The dynamic northern Indian Kathak literally shimmers with stamping and vibrations. Kathak embodies epic storytelling and vibrant energetic somatics.

Somatic Potentials and Expressive Imagination Above we’ve seen examples for further definitions of somatic phenomena and their various appearances, along with preliminary definitions of soma and somatics in the prologue. In this section we employ a spiral return of somatics as a concept, a practice, and a field of knowledge, which can be seen from several vantage points. Somatics might also be identified more narrowly with somatic affectivity and phenomenological awareness, as Hillel Braude’s chapter takes up. Our present definition starts with the body (soma) and widens progressively. As a concept, somatics derives from soma and psyche as reflexive, or self-­ perception, as noted in the prologue. Such perception is not passive but rather an ongoing active-­receptive process with content. Perceptual processes are not possible without sensate content. Something nudges perception into being. We pay attention because we become interested in our external surroundings or

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something we ourselves are doing as we move, work, and play. The contents or objects of perception in animate terms of somatics would be movement qualities that have internal affective influences. Individuals identify these in various ways, often as feelings or emotions that their own movements encourage in awareness of self and other. Affectivity involves the relational self, since what we call self exists in the life-­world and the social and cultural world of others. Responses, reactions, approaches, and withdrawals are some specific relational modes. We don’t often stop to think that we have a choice in how to respond, but there are somatic techniques that teach choice. We can disrupt habitual responses by noticing what we are intending and then taking a breath before acting. In the gap, something uncharacteristic of “self” might emerge. The use of breath to interrupt habitual responses and immediate reactions is especially useful in stressful situations. In somatic contexts, we also have a chance to rest or just to “be.” Hopefully, we also have a chance to be creative, moving from relaxed clarity as from the clutter of consciousness. Both are matters of affectivity in movement and self-­awareness. In our work, we allow whatever is present to be present, without judging the contents. As a practice, movement-­based somatics refers to approaches that cultivate experiences of the lived body, sensory appreciation (aesthesis and aesthetics), and awareness through movement. (Other somatic fields, specifically somatic psychology and somatic leadership, are differentiated in the prologue.) Somatic movement approaches include movement patterning, experiential anatomy, developmental movement, somatic yoga, and dance for personal and community development. These approaches often make explicit use of performance and expressive imagination. The use of touch is also prominent in movement-­based somatics, especially as applies to movement facilitation in bodywork and yoga, and contact in dance. In addition, somatic practices develop the potentials of moving interactively with others, playfully, and intuitively. Broadly, somatics is a field of study and practice concerned with holistic body-­centered approaches to assist people in experiencing and transforming the self through awareness relative to the living world, the environment, and others. Somatics is evolving a field of practices that benefit from study and research. For many years, Professor Seymour Kleinman directed a PhD program at the Ohio State University dedicated to the study of somatics. The California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco also offers advanced degrees in somatics, assisted through the work of Don Hanlon Johnson. I have already mentioned my development of somatic studies in dance at the State University of New York. In several ways my colleagues and I build on this beginning in the present book. We see from the foregoing that “self” and “self-­perception” are central to somatics, but a word of caution is helpful here. The theoretical stance of positivist research is based on the assumption that the world preexists as separate from you

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and me. The present study leads me to question clear separations of self, world, and other. The perspective of phenomenology is that the individual ego cannot be separated from the world. The world and others are the conditions by which self and self-­as-­knower (the latter is Antonio Damasio’s term) become possible. Self-­perception would be void without perceptions of otherness. Movement qualities and images arise through perceptions that have internal markers related to external circumstances. Soma and psyche as reflexive refers us to somatic qualities in experience that we can name. These qualities (values or valences) of movement are the “somatic” subjects of somatics. Movement itself is somatically affective, as we say in many ways, but the affective qualities have referents. For instance, slow, gentle movements performed without stress have the capacity to bring lightness and serenity to people. These would be ethereal—light, airy, tenuous, refined, rare, exquisite, fragile, and insubstantial movements—less earth than air—even as giving in to the earth, releasing and letting go, is somatically potent in its own way. Shin Somatics® often conceives the body energetically and symbolically through Eastern paradigms. There we encounter the first chakra in yoga—rooted, strong, and grounded energies through the feet, legs, and pelvis—including the popular warrior postures (asanas). Fluid and creative energies reside in the belly, the second chakra, which is understood as feminine because of pregnancy and birth. For this, I often teach crawling positions and processes, including one I call the lazy lizard, encouraging primordial connectivity of belly, navel, and earth. Just above the belly, expressions of the will develop around the solar plexus or the primary breathing diaphragm, originating on its own central tendon, attaching at the base of the sternum in front, to the lumbar and lower mid-­back, and to the lower ribs on both sides. This wonderful umbrella (or dome) below the heart is the complex third chakra. In Shin Somatics, we cultivate this as the anatomical body center where the breathing muscle (the diaphragm) meets the psoas muscle, connecting the upper and lower body in walking, reaching, twisting, and bending—in every dance. Yogic concepts can be projected beyond specific yoga postures into movement patterning and dance expressions that have lived correlations. The heart, for instance, lies just over the diaphragm, as the central organ and fourth chakra where we express giving and receiving, love and forgiveness. As centering the self through shin (oneness), the heart is the messenger and transformer. And when we are listening, it prompts compassion. Inspiring soft, surging movements, the heart represents the expansive embrace of love and surrender to loss and grief. The heart and torso activate the arms lyrically in forms of reaching out, drawing in, grasping, and yielding. Simple dances of lyrical arm patterns, sitting, standing, or moving through space, encourage forgiveness as a life-­affirming principle. It is very satisfying to use touch in relation to the heart with infants, cradling the infant and rocking while covering the heart gently with the free

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hand. Most infants love this, unless they are hungry. They often respond with calm connectivity, sometimes curiosity. Parents can also learn how to comfort infants through touching the heart space with a soft, melding hand. Infants teach us about the literal energy of the heart, and symbolically about the heart as home and the importance of touch and holding. Then comes the fifth chakra, the throat, where we say “I have a voice; my voice matters.” Releasing the jaw in somatic bodywork can assist the effectiveness of the voice (and swallowing). Moving up behind the eyes, we experience the mystical third eye, a common symbolization of vision in the Eastern world but less familiar in the West. Through this eye, the sixth chakra, we envision the future—and not just in yoga but also in dances that look out to the horizon. Semiotics of the body become lighter as we ascend to the seventh chakra at the crown of the head, symbolized in the white lotus blossom, an image for wisdom, age, and transcendence. The final section of Land to Water Yoga (2009) includes a process of unwinding the chakras. I conceive this progressively from the root to the transcendent lotus. Jeanne Schul, a longtime student of mine, now a Jungian psychologist and also an author in this book, first introduced me to a variety of chakra processes that envision the body creatively and improvisationally. She includes her conception of dancing the chakras in her chapter. My work concerning the chakras continues to evolve. I hold that the body is always one in its connectedness. The first chakra relates to the seventh and beyond. In butoh, the ascent to the lotus requires the mud of earth. Hijikata Tatsumi, the founder of butoh, famously declared the source of his dance: “I come from the mud.”

In the perspective above, we are relating body, movement, and expression through imagery and also drawing together major features of art and anatomy. We might speak inclusively of somatic movement arts as incorporating varied approaches to moving somatically. Concerning art as an overarching principle, the purpose of art is aesthetic, which also means affective. To move with a somatic purpose is to move with an aesthetic purpose, or affectively with a focus on feeling. Somatic experience is affective experience, and structuring situations for somatic experience to occur is an art, if not a fine art, at least an artful activity in kinesthetic communication. Just as we aim for transformation through art, we also seek transformative somatic experiences. Transformation witnessed through change and improvement is a general goal of somatic experiencing, not acquired through heightened discipline, but through joyful involvement. Somatic processes account for emotional responsiveness, since emotion is a major somatic marker. Image and archetype grow from these because emotions so often coalesce in images—visual, aural, kinesthetic, and in relation to all of the senses. Dance and theater are rich sources for such imagery, whether abstract or narrative. The impulse to dance, to create stories, and to perform can grow

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Figure 3. Rainbow bridge from Land to Water Yoga at the University of Otago, Shin Somatics Symposium and Workshop in 2013. In the spirit of expressive arts, this movement arches and extends the whole back with a roll to the side and upward glance, evoking a feeling for tango or flamenco. Photograph © 2013 by Kelly Ferris Lester.

directly in relation to image, emotion, and imagination. Bodily freedom thereby can be explored, or it can be exploited. How self and community are cultivated makes a difference in somatic contexts for performance. This can include performing for audiences, but dominant commercial goals of production might interfere with a somatic focus. Somatically, the consciousness of performers matters most.

Educare: Transforming the Past If we look closely, we see that all human movement has emotional congruence. Motion is part of e-­motion, and vice versa, as somatic studies account for, first nonverbally, and subsequently through non-­invasive verbal communication. Somatic practitioners and teachers learn effective communication skills that focus on listening and not assuming answers. In this spirit, discovery modes of learning and healing are encouraged in somatic practices. Command is discouraged. The teacher doesn’t presume to have the answers. Rather, she is in a

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process of discovery with her students. As Plato taught, the student already has the answers.1 Teachers simply provide the circumstances for their arrival. The word education derives from the Latin educare, to draw forth. In the body, teaching and learning ensue from the throat, the energies of the voice, and from the eyes and ears. In owning our body, we say “I can speak, I have a voice,” and “I can hear and see, learn and know.” The teacher and student appear phenomenologically in tandem. One doesn’t exist without the other, and they are essences not merely of the head but of the whole minded body. Teaching and learning expand through speaking and listening. Likewise, we learn and discover through moving, acting, and making choices. Consciousness expands in the process. It might expand still further when we present or portray our learning, whether verbally or in action. When we externalize through problem solving, through speech, dance, music, or in painting and architecture, we engage a transformational process, converting the somatic, internal milieu into external signs of life so that others may participate in the current of our knowledge. Presentation is a necessary cycle of transformational learning, and certainly of transformational dancing. It is not enough to keep learning private; we have to share in order to grow the self, and this can be risky. When the inside moves out, we disclose something of ourselves, which takes courage. The teacher, I believe, is at best a non-­judgmental witness to the student’s transformation, and maybe at times a cheerleader. There is nothing so exhilarating for me as a beautiful question or risked performance, especially from a student who is just testing the dancer in himself. Maybe it is just the shaking of his hands that I appreciate, his fingers and arms plowing deep into sand for no other reason than to dance, or finally the heart energy and breath lifting his arms, spreading upward. Release is a storied word: from holding on comes letting go, a way out and escape, a transformation or even an evaporation—phenomenologically. I have led many dance explorations on disappearance. And why would I want to? Such butoh-­inspired metamorphic dances provide unique opportunities for self-­renewal, forgetting, and forgiving. People often reflect on self-­forgiveness as they shed judgment. The processes of somatics are therefore not easily confused with exercise. They are only sometimes vigorous, and they do not by design develop cardiovascular efficiency or strength. Flexibility is not the express goal, either. Transformation through letting go of negative emotions and exploration of positive feelings is a goal, and not through talk, but through the body directly. Integration, wholeness, composure, stability with mobility, expressive fluency, grace, and ease would more aptly express somatic goals relative to movement and dance. Somatic practices do not develop exercises; rather, they create frameworks or maps for movement and dance experiences. As a somatics practitioner and teacher, I sometimes think of myself as an archeologist, a treasure hunter on a dig, excavating body memories and possible selves. I have mapped falling movements, for instance—guiding students incrementally toward existential modes of falling.

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The affects evoked range widely. Some people experience fear, and others pleasure. Some just can’t fall on purpose, but that is fine. We are always in a process of learning, of falling down and getting up. Maybe those who can’t fall easily will never learn how, and that is all right. There is no goal but the learning itself. I have made frameworks to explore heaviness, peering below the murky surface. Heavy movement commonly drags us down, for instance, but if one makes a conscious choice to move in a heavy way, the process can be undertaken with curiosity toward the result. Then one gets a chance to observe heaviness with strong passive weight (as explored in Laban movement studies) without being caught up in depressive states. Heaviness and lightness are part of the body story of everyone, but our stories are individual. When we tell our stories directly through dance and movement, we can heal emotional wounds, letting go of unwanted weight, not merely of pounds, but of worry and habit. Such dances are ultimately insubstantial. Like ether, they will vanish in thin air, but the purpose will not be lost, as we risk and test self-­understanding. Often we learn about what we share in common with others through the miracle of forgiveness. In moving our stories out, we glance ourselves, and through the vision, we get a chance to rewrite the stories that hold us in their thrall. Yes, we can rewrite the past, in our bones, somatically. This is possible for the teacher as for the student. The teacher is not an innocent bystander in transformational dance somatics; rather she is a living part of it. Her consciousness is on the line also.

Somatic Phenomena and Consciousness Breath is a somatic phenomenon. Is it any wonder we call the first phase of a breath an “inspiration”? Breath links with ether and air, holding and escape. Breath is movement, and it also supports movement. Breath lives in every gestured emotion and casual step, in every restful or stressful state, in every gasp and sigh. We lift an arm, and the breath rises also. We release the breath in performance and spin on its dynamic outflow. It is most significant that breath, the automatic link between flesh and air, can also be brought to awareness. What was unconscious and automatic suddenly becomes a matter of conscious movement with a degree of control. Somatic practices develop ways of working with and improving breath. Breathwork has evolved as a significant part of the field of somatic practices. Breathwork has hundreds of years of history in India with pranayama (the breath of life), as also in the ancient practices of qi gong from China, and in Japanese meditational forms that focus on counting the breath to release the busy occupations of the mind. Conscious breathing is central to Zen meditation in Japan. Mindfulness meditation as taught in the West owes a great deal to Japanese Zazen, especially in its use of breath and cultivation of non-­judgment. Conscious use of breath has also evolved in the West through various somatic studies;

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Rosen, Middendorf, and Laban are three approaches the authors of this book have experienced. We know that one cannot understand the breath simply by looking at a chart of its structures, including the primary breathing diaphragm. When we breathe, the diaphragm is necessarily involved, though sometimes not as effectively and freely as it might be. In anatomy texts, we see that the diaphragm is pictured as a dome separating the abdomen and thoracic cavity, but until we experience the movement of the dome, until we breathe and pay attention to the somatic influence on our whole organism, our understanding will remain visual and theoretic. Like phenomenology, somatics is a field that privileges whole body experience, as we consider. In somatic ways of knowing, consciousness matters. Phenomenology enters into my teaching of Shin Somatics, but rarely directly. Rather I advise students according to their special interests and projects. I began to write using the tools of phenomenology in 1970, when I became aware that aesthetic discourse on dance was distanced from the actual experience. I remain committed to the idea that philosophy isn’t useful unless it helps us examine and improve our lives. Phenomenology should do this; somatics provides it unique opportunities. Experiential description and ensuing narratives validate individual and shared experiences, as we in somatic fields of study learn how to voice mindful awareness and somatosensory experience from what physician and neurobiologist Antonio Damasio calls “the feeling of what happens.” His groundbreaking book, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), shows how emotions arise from bodily states, and demonstrates their importance to intellect, rationality, and consciousness. He proposes “that the word feeling be reserved for private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable.”2 This implies that you can observe a feeling in yourself, but not in another person. You can, however, observe emotions in both others and yourself. Perhaps we read emotion by the nature of the movement we observe in others, and interpret emotion or make meaning of others’ movements from our own experienced understandings. In The Feeling of What Happens, Damasio explains somatic phenomena, arguing that consciousness is originally based on an awareness of the somatic milieu, or awareness of inner states, and that we use somatic states such as emotions and feelings to mark, and thereby evaluate, external perceptual information. He considers this in his chapter “The Organism and the Object.” He writes that “if there is no boundary, there is no body, and if there is no body, there is no organism.” Life needs boundaries. Bodies have boundaries and internal states.3 In terms of our work in somatic movement studies, we can see through Damasio’s science how matching of inside states to an external object world occurs. Consciousness evolved, Damasio believes, as “the life urge within a boundary.”4

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Consciousness is fundamental to mind and thought, and it does not control the body. Neither does its close relative the brain control the body. The brain exists in bodily tissues, in cells, fluids, and nerves. In its functions, it serves the rest of the body as a participant. The brain is both physically and emotionally part of the body. The cliché of “mind over matter,” as traditional dualism would have it, is a way of expressing a use of the will. Damasio speaks of the generation of the mind by the body, and the mind’s role in regulating the body. I call this circular relationship of body and mind “oneness.” He describes it as necessitated: “A mind is so closely shaped by the body and destined to serve it that only one mind could possibly arise in it. No body, never mind. For any body, never more than one mind. . . . Body-­minded minds help save the body.”5 Phenomenology and neuroscience both teach that mind and body are not separate; the mind is embodied. Likewise, the brains of humans and other living beings are part of their organism. Constancy of the internal milieu—the soma—is necessary to maintain life and is likely an anchor to self-­definition, the organismic and mindful boundary that we call self.6 A sense of self arises through consciousness of the embodied mind. Scientific studies find relationships rather than separate entities of body, mind, spirit, and self. Damasio had already refuted traditional dualism in his 1994 Descartes’ Error.7 His work shows how consciousness involves interaction of cognitive representations in working memory. Thus does consciousness arise somatically in correspondence with the world and experience, and it is aided by emotion, not hampered. Emotions are not bad actors, they are what we need to thrive and survive. The question for somatic practices is how movement and emotion correspond, and how to create frameworks for positive emotional life through movement experiences. In Dance and the Lived Body (1987), I explore the history of traditional Western concepts of the body, especially body/mind dualism through Platonic and Cartesian views.8 Phenomenology is a discipline that systematically refutes dualistic concepts, as I show in that book; and now scientific studies of the brain have challenged taken-­for-­granted separations of body and mind. In Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (2004), I continue investigations of dualism from various standpoints, but now with gender in mind, since mind is stereotypically assigned masculine properties of intellect, and body associated with assumed feminine properties of emotion and intuition. Dance is identified with the body, interpreted as feminine in the West and devalued thereby, its cognitive aspects typically ignored. Much of my work has been to revision the body in terms of dualism, dance, and gender. To this end, I have engaged metaphysics. The work of somatics in providing a laboratory for the practice of gender equality and individuality in view of consciousness has only just begun. What if what we call “the outer world” is simply the visible, and what is considered “inner” is the hidden but not yet apparent? What if we are not

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separate from the world of human experience and history, nature, and each other, as phenomenology teaches? We inhabit a world that already inhabits us. Consciousness as a phenomenon underlying and uniting all aspects of Self came late in the twentieth century along with concerns to explain the nature of the brain as part of the body. What is already whole cannot be separated, even if we do have ways of speaking that identify varying aspects of self and otherness that make sense to us. We in the West have inherited bifurcated, composite notions of self/body, body/mind, body/mind/spirit, and body/soul. These are culturally and linguistically reinforced through religious dogma. Scientific investigations like those of Damasio and other medical researchers (such as Hillel Braude, see chapter 7) reveal that phenomena of body, self, and states of consciousness never function separately. Even ethical reasoning involving our sense of right and wrong has its basis in bodily life. Damasio views conscience as a development of extended consciousness.9 It is not a special faculty reserved for a few; we are permitted conscience as conscious creatures. Daniel Siegel, scientist and psychiatrist, also sees through his studies of the brain that conscience, as relative to morality, arises from “the mindful brain,” and in light of experience.10 Regarding related matters of the soul, people speak of “soul” spiritually, romantically, mythopoetically, and in terms of religion and the sacred. For myself, I believe that soulful feelings are somatic markers and matters of consciousness. Like the promptings of conscience, they have organic sources

Figure 4. Angi Graff bonding mindfully with soft stone in “Soft-­Skin Sandstone Butoh” in Snow Canyon, Utah. Photography © 2010 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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in the body, encouraging us to trust our best selves (some would say “higher wisdom”) as guides to the future.

Frames of Reference I am influenced by concepts of the body from Eastern philosophy and dance forms that see the body as extending energetically beyond the skin in its connection to all that is. This frame of reference might properly be called mystical. This frame speaks to me, as does Damasio: I don’t see these views as conflicting. Science tends not to go past the boundaries of its objective reference points. If I want a view of the limitless body, I’ll have to turn elsewhere, mainly toward the East. This will point me toward the dissolution of self in meditation. Meditational practices allow me to deconstruct myself, as any thoughts of “self” or “other” flow by on a river of breath. I see this as a special use of what Damasio has called “extended consciousness,” as permitting memory and anticipations of a future that allow us to see across a lifetime. Then why not active forgetting? I have noticed that after a satisfying meditation, I don’t evaporate into the universe. I am still very much myself, if a somewhat better self. Meditation helps me let go some of the burdens I habitually carry, and to enter my creative endeavors with more freedom and gratitude. What I have learned in my studies of the body is that language can be tricky. Somatics and phenomenology give me ways to go directly to experience for answers, and I can also turn toward science. I think it would be irresponsible of me as a teacher of body-­based work not to pay attention to the emerging science of consciousness, which has only been with us since the late twentieth century. The term consciousness was not around with Plato. Its first recorded use is in 1632.11 Husserl (1859–1938) brought the term forward in 1900 through his phenomenology of intentionality, in Logical Investigations.12 I say that “moving consciously” defines our somatics approach at Eastwest. There are probably several frames of reference for moving consciously, however. I also encourage students and clients to begin where they are. They don’t need to have previous study of dance or movement, or to hold my position on dualism. Body, mind, and spirit are all words in the English language, and words are just that. They are linguistic parts of experience that guide common understandings. Thus as a practitioner, I need to pay attention to how terms are commonly understood and expressed. I would not attempt to correct the language of a client—that is not my job. But I can hold views of my own that assist me in conceiving the body and mind as one. If anyone asks me about my views, I’m always happy to explain the wholeness of Shin, as well as the oneness of time and space, as Einstein taught in physics, or the similar view of Maurice Merleau-­Ponty that our body is not “in space,” it is “of space.” As a teacher of those who will be somatic teachers and practitioners, my position is more critical. I have an obligation to present what I understand of

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evolving concepts of consciousness, from my study of phenomenology, and from neurobiology, this highly productive field of inquiry that continues to develop in tandem with studies of the embodied brain. The poetry of T. S. Eliot also helps me—in “Burnt Norton” from his longer poem, The Four Quartets: Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-­garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered.

Consciousness Is Vast As a word, consciousness accrues meaning in the ways we use it and also in the manner that scholars and scientists research it. The term consciousness can seem both near and puzzling. We take consciousness for granted in our waking experience of self and world. Philosophers will probably continue to debate its meaning and neurobiologists seek to explore and explain its constructs. In somatic studies, consciousness matters. Husserl taught that consciousness has an object: consciousness is consciousness of something. And on Damasio’s terms that we just explored, consciousness and object relativity is a correspondence between “the organism and the object.” The “things” of consciousness, its objects, are what phenomenologists ever since Husserl investigate as “things in themselves.”13 Objects of conscious awareness, its contents, can be anything, from internal thoughts or sense images to phenomena outside the body’s internal milieu. Damasio considers the contents of consciousness in terms of pattern and image, not privileging visual sense and image, but inclusive of all the senses, as we see in a moment. This is valuable insight for studies based on kinesthetic attention to movement patterning and imagery in dance, yoga, and touch. Consciousness is more than awareness, but what is the “more”? Awareness has to do with orientation of attention, and sometimes refers to perceptual realization, while consciousness is vast and not merely about immediate attention or perception. Consciousness has sensory modalities and mental contents, images patterned in every possible color, sound, and memory; images constructed in words, thoughts, and ideas; and images realized in kinesthetic and tactile experience. It is most interesting that such images are associated in consciousness, and not separate phenomena, even if we can focus awareness through visual, aural, or kinesthetic imagery, all with distinct patterns and feeling tones. In Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (2012), Damasio shows how images, both abstract and concrete, are “the main currency of our minds.”14 In this, he associates images and minded awareness. Mind is more than the ability to think in words; it is also the ability to imagine and create images of all

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kinds in tandem with bodily knowledge and feeling. Cognition, a whole group of mental processes that include attention, uses of language and numbers, the ability to solve problems, to reflect, to understand and know, is a complex function of minded consciousness, and not separate from bodily feelings, patterns, or images. Damasio speaks of “feelings of knowing,” revealing how felt knowing can produce a sense of ownership and agency.15 At best, somatic practices promote such agency through “felt knowing.” In several ways, somatic practices show that feelings are not distinctly about the body, nor is knowing a special faculty of the mind. I am interested in the intersection of feeling and knowing, and if Damasio is right, I see this occurring naturally in consciousness. Seeking a neural basis for the “self-­as-­object,” what he also calls “the material me,” he defines consciousness existentially through the term “existence,” as “a state of mind in which there is knowledge of one’s own existence and of the existence of surroundings” (his emphasis).16 I might simplify this definition this way: personal knowledge of our own existence and surroundings, with the understanding that conscious states of mind have a somatic basis in felt life, the “feelings of knowing,” that Damasio speaks of. Objective and subjective positioning of the self has been very much alive in phenomenology for more than a century—through the work of Husserl and in the existential phenomenology of Jean-­Paul Sartre, Merleau-­Ponty, and others. Damasio positions self similarly, as both an objective known quality of consciousness and at the same time the subjective knower. To the definition of consciousness as a state of mind, Damasio adds that states of mind are always accompanied by feelings.17 We are conscious and very much alive to the feeling of our own existence, or perhaps the feeling is dull, but if we are awake and conscious, we feel something (consciousness is consciousness of something). We are conscious of surroundings and boundaries, and come to have an identity of our own that is apparent to us. Somatically, we can also feel connected to others and a larger whole. If I were to state the above in a phenomenological, somatic drift of self-­ knowing, I would say that I am the self I know, and I am also the one who knows, calling, responding, and dreaming. I gain passing glimpses of my invisible soma in the morphology of sound (music), bodily expression (dance), and word paintings (poetry). As communicative, they connect me to my feelings, to others, and a world beyond myself.

Habits Want to Stay We don’t usually stop to ask what we are aware of when we move, but we can do this as a matter of choice. When we pay attention to our movement and notice what happens, we are moving consciously. We may even unravel habits we want to change. Our everyday movements are mostly habitual and thus within our bodily range of what phenomenology’s founder Husserl calls our “I cans.”18 Habit

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is a matter of consciousness that concerned both Husserl and Feldenkrais. The latter devised a method to address movement habits. His quest was to provide more options with movement in mind, making the difficult easy in Awareness Through Movement® lessons.19 In paying attention to our movement and its affects (feelings and emotions stimulated by movement), we can change, and this matters. We don’t need to be caught in habits that don’t serve our lives. The body has a limited range of possible states, Damasio teaches, and for a good reason. It wants to preserve its organism against the assaults of the outside world, which changes dramatically and hourly.20 Damasio’s work on homeostasis is interesting to somatics in this regard. The health of the body in its generation of brain states, and vice versa, depends on core constancy. Or I would put it this way: we need to be able to return home, to experience the beauty of rest, and to be able to depend on calm neutrality. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow to find that I’m suddenly someone or something else, like the Kafka character who becomes a cockroach. I have a vested interest in remaining who I am. But don’t I try to become other in butoh dances? Of course I do! I love dancing subliminally through concentration on imagery of otherness, such as bugs, fish, and stones. I don’t always want to be myself or to be calm. How boring. So what does this have to do with habit, or with changing habits? And why do that, anyway? For myself, I need both habit and variety. I also don’t want to court change for itself alone. Within my limited capacity to change, I would like to change in a positive direction. I want to continue to learn, which means to grow past myself. Phenomenologically, I need to get rid of myself to do that, to get out of my own way. I don’t want to be my same old self every day (but didn’t I just say I wanted to be sure I would be the same person?). What I really mean is that I want to find more of myself, to experience more of my potent self (as Feldenkrais called it). I continue to practice conscious awareness in movement patterning lessons and somatic yoga, and I probe liminal unconscious life in dance improvisations because I seek to move past the ordinary. I seek to know something of the extraordinary that I might be capable of, but haven’t yet reached. I don’t really want to become an amoeba, but I do want to experience movements of single-­ celled oneness. I also want to expiate sorrow, relieve pain, and to feel my best. Who wouldn’t? I understand that not everyone has these motivations, but there is something of the urge to life and change that does manifest in healthy people. In wellness, consciousness matters. “Our will becomes the form of our body,” wrote one of my favorite phenomenologists—Paul Ricoeur.21 He writes about the relationship of voluntary and involuntary movement through the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems. I learn about habit as “second nature” newly from him, even as I thought I already knew the concept. In his book Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1966), he shows that the will is not imperial. There is an

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unseen bond between the voluntary and involuntary in movement. He posits that we become free when we reach effortlessness (naturalness) in movement and being. Moreover, this freedom cannot be willed, only experienced. When we move consciously, rather than repetitively, when we pay attention, we have a chance to observe ourselves and to change. It is significant to somatic approaches that exertions of the will prevent the experience of freedom in our embodiment of movement. As an experience, freedom moves beneath the will, in breath, surrender, and verbs of permission. In our somatics instructions, we favor verbs such as allow, explore, and discover. Create is a good one, too, and dance is also a verb of permission when it is presented this way. Discovery methods in teaching (rather than command modes) assist students to move past stressful movement habits, and to remain curious. Lighter valences, we noted near the beginning of this chapter, are less willful in breath and letting go; earthy ones are more energetically potent.

Figure 5. Offering permission through a light and listening touch, Eastwest graduate Christina Sears Etter matches the hand of Anne Marie Ferris, a workshop student from Ireland. Christina will use this discovered connection to encourage flowing movement patterns in a shared improvisational dance with Anne Marie. Photograph © 2012 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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Moving as Knowing We can ask what we are aware of in the experience of a particular movement process. Such awareness might rise to the surface of consciousness in words, in phrases, or exist as intuitions that we can later use as springboards toward verbal descriptions or visual art. We can ask what was learned as a result of the experience. That would be a step removed from the experience, but an important step. Moving consciously in somatic explorations produces ways of knowing that can be described or depicted. The perception of participants and their descriptions of experiences are primary ways of knowing in somatic processes, even as the teacher or therapist plays an important role in designing experiences and helping students and clients contextualize or refine sensory and perceptual information. Somatic movement practices might even be called phenomenology in action, since paying attention in the moment of movement and describing what happens, or depicting it visually (in song, poetry, or another communicative medium) are core elements of somatic modes of learning and healing. Reflecting on the experience further affirms somatic learning. Narrative and story grow from there. Analysis that makes use of phenomenological description would direct the process toward interpretation and hermeneutics. For researchers, such ontological ingredients of somatic studies present projects for scholarship that could broaden the efficacy of the somatic field as a whole. “Practice as research” might include somatic processes that seed theory. Bracketing is a technique of phenomenology that sets apart or selects aspects of a phenomenon. In our case, this would be movement experiences that provide a basis for self-­understanding or sociality. These can be described through paying attention to feelings that arise through movement. I might ask what change has occurred in a particular movement process. Do I feel taller, lighter, more grounded, or balanced through the experience? Do I feel harmony in my body and a friendly association with those around me? Do I feel happy or sad? Do I feel like crying? Is there a prominent image that comes to my imagination, a sight or sound? What personal insights arrive through intuitive dance improvisations and through being moved in repatterning explorations? We can encourage the subconscious to speak, however such speech may arrive, through poetry, dance, visual art, or story. The descriptive stance of phenomenology is concerned to articulate first person experience. I like to speak of “somatic phenomenology” in nonverbal descriptive contexts also, and add depiction or visual representation, since drawing, painting, and sculpting are immediate, intuitive ways to capture movement experience. Additionally, I employ responsive dance as a nonverbal way to show or represent an impression, dancing the pain of someone else, for instance, that they might see it in a representation. In this book, we use phenomenology in descriptive,

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depictive, and responsive ways. At the same time, we respect its philosophical foundation in Husserl, its later manifestations in Merleau-­Ponty, and its more recent articulations through Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone, especially in her book Primacy of Movement, carrying the work of Husserl further in terms of animate life and human movement.22 Phenomenological description opens a door to the study experience and a way to share it from a subjective point of view. Nevertheless, it has a universalizing impulse; voicing human activity is part of this. The subjective stance of phenomenology is not personal in the sense of being private. Individual experience intuitively derived would aptly describe the personal in phenomenology. Phenomenological description validates intuition and is pre-­reflective. A reflective or even analytical account may come later, as we have noted. I present a phenomenological method of moving between description, analysis, and interpretation in an earlier work.23 Somatic studies benefit from first-­person experiential accounts of self-­moving, as also descriptions of how movement connects or estranges. One needs to ask about the disposition of the mover. Is he paying attention to his own movement or a relationship with another or several others through movement? Is he moving with or being moved by someone else? First-­person descriptive accounts of somatic experiences provide phenomenological data for research, especially in recorded or written forms. The resulting research would properly be called qualitative. The results are not generalizable, as they are in qualitative methods. Phenomenologists consider experiential descriptions to be self-­evidence, evidence that can be examined and compared across many instances. A leading field of somatic education, Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), can provide relatively objective accounts of movement, observing movement according to effort and shape. In LMA, the observable movement phenomena serve as data for further analysis and interpretation. A primary tenant of the LMA framework is the relationship of movement and expression, as I learned in conversation with Becky Dyer, a certified Laban Movement Analyst and professor of dance. She says that other LMA themes include dynamic interplay of inner experience and outer expression of this, embodied relations and interactions, and intention in moving that shapes action. Narratives often ensue that can involve phenomenological description. When movement descriptions speak to kinesthetic experience or empathic connectivity through movement, they are phenomenological. Empathic resonance between individuals and within groups, especially through dancing together, can provide entrances into phenomenological descriptions. Phenomenology provides instances of experience, not full autobiographies. Moreover, it is not about what happens to people, but how they feel, or what they know in the course of what happens. What Damasio calls the autobiographical self can appear as people connect experiential dots in life stories.

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Bodily consciousness grows from a nonverbal, somatic source, eventually elaborating the autobiographical self of self-­development. In telling our stories, writing them, dancing them, and painting them, we externalize felt and psychic life. We become more to ourselves and become more visible to others. Of course there are also times when we wish to be invisible, to fade and cover ourselves with the comfort of darkness. This is also a matter of living with choice and moving consciously. Damasio explains the conceptual basis of the autobiographical self this way: “Unlike the core self, which inheres as a protagonist of the primordial account, and unlike the proto-­self, which is a current representation of the state of the organism, the autobiographical self is based on a concept in the true cognitive and neurobiological sense of the term.”24 The autobiographical self elaborates implicit memory and grows continuously with new life experiences. Somatic processes that involve dance and movement make explicit associations with life experience, as we do at Eastwest. Phenomenology as narrative stems from the autobiographical self, from memory, and somatosensory information inherent in yoga, intrinsic dance experiences, assisted movement, and gentle movement patterning. All of these provide avenues toward self-­knowledge. It merits saying that somatic issues cross over all of the arts as well as sports. Dancers have been most interested in developing the somatic terrain, but it belongs to everyone who moves—everyone.

Self-­Evidence in Words To assist students in discovering a descriptive voice for what is primarily nonverbal, I teach a spiral method of phenomenology in my somatics workshops. I have explained this method elsewhere.25 Descriptions of immediate experience are a way of sharing somatic experiences, but finding the direct and intuitive way to describe movement, affect, and our sensate proximity to others is at first daunting. It requires one to voice what is not initially discursive, but kinesthetic in nature, felt as kinesthetic dynamic, qualitatively distinct in tone, shape, size, tensional intensity, and more. Movement also involves memory and exhibits mind, the same mind that infuses body consciousness as a whole. Laced with habit and tacit body memory, movement is thus available as a major affordance of somatic practices. It is difficult to speak of movement as separate or separable from persons and their experiences. Their movement becomes them and describes them, as phenomenologists such as Merleau-­Ponty and Paul Ricoeur have taught. Phenomenology has given me a method for intuitive and theoretical reflections on somatic studies and experience from multiple perspectives. Eventually, I contextualize these within the larger framework of phenomenology as a branch of modern philosophy. I explain this more fully in my article “Consciousness Matters.” I consider there how phenomenology does not rest on descriptive

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accounts alone. Eventually these are contextualized in fuller theoretical treatises. If descriptive writing doesn’t find its way toward philosophy, it might be interesting narrative, but it is not phenomenology. Phenomenology has a somatic basis itself, especially in its trust of intuition and valuing of descriptive accounts of experience. In this book, we employ the spirit of phenomenology in terms of its critique of dualist theories of body and mind, and we are making use of intuitively derived description, as these may also develop cohesive narratives. Descriptions and narratives of first-­person experience constitute self-­evidence in writing and research. Somatic practices give us a chance to pay attention to how we feel. That is what somatics is for! When we seek to give evidence to our feelings through descriptive accounts or through narratives, we also seek the words that describe how we feel about what happens in the moment of its occurrence. This is a matter of consciousness and a linguistic extension of moving consciously. notes 1. Study of Plato in Professor John Caton’s class, “Plato,” State University of New York, College at Brockport, spring semester 1989. 2. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 42. 3. Ibid., 133–67, 137. 4. Ibid., 137. 5. Ibid., 143. 6. Ibid., 136. 7. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994). 8. Sondra Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 8–15. 9. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 230. 10. See Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-­Being (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 44. 11. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 232. 12. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge, 1970) 13. Edmund Husserl, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten, book 1 of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Boston: Kluwer, 1983), 35. 14. Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 2012), 170. 15. Ibid., 222. 16. Ibid., 167. 17. Ibid., 168. 18. Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, trans. Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl, book 3 of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Boston: Kluwer, 1980), 106–12.

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1. why consciousness mat ters / 23 19. For a full explanation of his method, see Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness through Movement (New York: Harper & Row, 1972, 1977). 20. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 142. 21. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim V. Kohak (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 328. 22.  Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone, The Primacy of Movement (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999). 23. Sondra Fraleigh, “Consciousness Matters,” Dance Research Journal 32, no. 1 (summer 2000): 54–62. This article built on “A Vulnerable Glance: Seeing Dance through Phenomenology,” Dance Research Journal 23, no. 1 (spring 1991): 11–16. 24. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 173. 25. Sondra Fraleigh, “The Spiral Dance: Phenomenology as Method,” in Researching Dance, eds. Sondra Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 215.

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chapter 2

Somatic Movement Arts Sondra Fraleigh

In the prologue and the previous chapter, I defined somatics as a word and as a phenomenon. Here, I widen my inquiry to speak of somatics as a kinesthetic field for study and cultivation of movement arts, including my experiences and conceptualizations of somatic methods in dance performance. In figure 6, we see Christina Sears Etter performing at the Eastwest Somatics Tuscan Sun Retreat in Italy in 2012. Her blithe performance will lead out into the environment and involve others in a dance with the Tuscan landscape. When I became acquainted with somatic methods to cultivate performance and awareness, I saw something incredibly special. I could pay attention in the moment and explore various paths toward solutions of problems, whether they presented in my day-­to-­day life or in performance. How magical. I came to understand that people don’t need to get stuck in one way of doing something; we can be the agents of our own self-­learning and healing; we can change and grow, always. I had already studied the importance of self-­responsibility through existentialism, though I did this more intellectually than in practice. Later, I learned how somatic methods encourage the living dynamics of freedom and choice. Moshe Feldenkrais taught that if you don’t have three ways of doing something, you don’t have a choice. (I can think of at least five ways to write this sentence, but I’ll settle on this one for now.)

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Figure 6. Christina Sears Etter performs at the Eastwest Tuscan Sun Retreat in 2012. Janine Housley witnesses along with others nearby. Photograph © 2012 by Kay Nelson. Figure 7. Eastwest graduate Akane Storey explores liminal awareness in a Shin Somatics Depth-­Movement Dance improvisation. Storey teaches somatics with a specialization in prenatal care, birthing, and the mother-­baby relationship. She works and lives in Mexico. Photograph © 2012 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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Thumbnail Sketch of Somatic History I studied one of the first forms of somatics before there was a word in English for it. That was gymnastik in 1965 with Frau Mathilde Thiele, one of my teachers at the Mary Wigman School in Berlin, Germany. Her version contained a lot of stretching with partners while paying attention to the feeling of stretch, and was nothing like what we in the United States call gym or gymnastics. Frau Thiele lived out her final years in upstate New York just twenty miles from my home at that time. I visited her often. Sometimes we would get down on her small living room floor and do gymnastik. Our version usually ended with me gently rolling her head underneath my hands. “No one ever touches old people,” she would say to me with tears welling up. I was studying the Feldenkrais Method® then, and Frau Thiele was fascinated with what I was learning about touch and movement. She lived into her late nineties. In my time with her, I listened often to her stories of dance in wartime Germany, eventually writing about them, including a special group dance she did on tour with Dore Hoyer’s dance company after the war, and her dinner with Gret Palucca and Hitler. I wanted to record her stories as a personal dance history.1 Meanwhile, a related history was growing, which would eventually build a cadre of studies and practices known as somatics, and in which, to my surprise, I would play a key role. According to Martha Eddy, the field of somatics grew out of a cultural need to find a new relationship to our bodies, arriving gradually through the optimism of the Victorian era at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing its first phase into the twentieth century: “From the unique experiences of exploratory individuals across the globe, fresh approaches to bodily care and education emerged. However, it took the outside view of scholars, some fifty years later, to name this phenomenon as the single field of somatic education.”2 In their books, Thomas Hanna (1985) and Don Hanlon Johnson (1995) first named the field of studies we now call somatics. Eddy credits them, along with somatics professor Seymour Kleinman of the Ohio State University, in naming common features in the somatic methods of Bess Mensendieck (1864–1957), Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869–1955), Rudolph von Laban (1879–1958), Mabel Todd (1880–1956), Elsa Gindler (1885–1961), Lulu Sweigard (1895– 1974), Ida Rolf (1896–1979), Gerda Alexander (1904–1994), Moshe Feldenkrais (1904–1984), Françoise Mézières (1909–1991), Milton Trager (1909–1997), Ilsa Middendorf (1910–2009), and their protégés Imgard Bartenieff (1900–1981), Carola Speads (1900–1999), Charlotte Selver (1901–2003), and Marion Rosen (1914–2012). For their influence and based on their writings, Eddy cites F. M. Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais, Mabel Todd, Irmgard Bartenieff, Charlotte Selver, Milton Trager, Gerda Alexander, and Ida Rolf as “the somatic pioneers.”3 Collectively, their work spanned from the late nineteenth century into the late twentieth century. The term somatics has stuck in describing movement

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disciplines that use a variety of methods and skills, including subtle qualities of touch, empathic verbal communication, and multifaceted movement experiences, sometimes confirmed through touch. The unique processes of somatic disciplines assist people in discovering ease and pleasure in movement. The teacher can adapt and individualize the process, since somatic work emphasizes creative interplay between the teacher and the student. The goal of somatic movement is to facilitate a student-­client’s own self-­learning and healing. The teacher is a catalyst toward that goal. We see through Eddy’s voluminous scholarship on the history of somatic practices that they have been with us for more than a century. She also documents a second phase of this history, showing how throughout the latter half of the twentieth century until now, dancers have strongly influenced the field of somatics. They have seen in dance special opportunities to heighten sensory and kinesthetic awareness and to facilitate self-­knowledge. Eddy cites this author as one of the innovators of the second phase of somatics: “The work of Elaine Summers (a student of Selver and Speads), Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Emilie Conrad, Sondra Fraleigh, Anna Halprin, Joan Skinner, and the late Nancy Topf all derived in part from their experiences as dancers and was immediately applicable to the dance community. These women have all played pivotal roles as leaders, and bridged the fields of somatic education and dance. On their own and with their students, each has taken bodily inquiry to new levels of human potential.”4 Eddy identifies phenomenology and existentialism as influences on developments in somatics. Together these philosophies challenged rationalism, providing intellectual and theoretical support for experiential learning and sensory research. These shifts were driven by the theories of John Dewey on art as experience, by Maurice Merleau-­Ponty’s philosophy of “the lived body,” and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, which made process the leading ontological concern. He held the metaphysical position that sequentially structured sequences of successive stages or phases are essential aspects of everything that exists. Thus, somatic inquiry was buoyed by growth of existentialism and phenomenology, developments in pragmatic education and process thinking, as well as through dance and expressionism in the arts. Eddy holds that related developments in psychology were spread into diverse concerns of somatics through the groundbreaking work of Freud, Jung, and Reich in psychology; Heinrich Jacoby and John Dewey in education; and Edmond Jacobson in medical research. Developments in cultural studies of art, architecture, dance, and music were pioneered by François Delsarte (1811–1871), Émile Jaques-­Dalcroze (1865–1950), Rudolf von Laban (1879–1958), Isadora Duncan (1878–1927), and Mary Wigman (1886–1973). We see through Martha Eddy’s article, as also through the books of Thomas Hanna (1985, 1988) and Don Hanlon Johnson (1995) that somatic

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endeavors have broad roots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through art, educational theory, medicine, philosophy, and psychology.5 In the twenty-­ first century we would need to include ecological studies and neuroscience. In the United States, Margaret H’Doubler (1889–1982) spurred creative dance explorations at the root of dance somatics, even though we didn’t use the term then. Laban and Wigman were key figures in Europe. My association with the European school is primarily through Wigman, one of my teachers, as I take up in chapter 3. She was a student and primary protégé of Laban, whose work is widely practiced in the United States. Thus, I have experienced Laban’s work in several contexts. H’Doubler combined creative dance and the study of biological sciences as central to the first U.S. university dance department, which she established at the University of Wisconsin. Many leaders of dance in higher education today can trace their lineage back to H’Doubler. I also trace back to her through Elizabeth Hayes, one of the first graduates of H’Doubler’s newly established University of Wisconsin dance program. Dr. Hayes later developed a highly successful dance department at the University of Utah. In university seminars with Hayes in Utah, I first encountered kinesthesia as an important concept applicable to dance and movement, and wrote papers on dance and kinesthesia. In my student teaching prior to earning my undergraduate degree with Hayes and primary teachers Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe, I was already experimenting with movement visualizations that my students seemed to enjoy. Hayes asked me to write them down and included them in a short section of one of her books. My somatic career was launched. I never forgot the joy of her recognition or the power of moving consciously. Joan Woodbury also asked me to write on dance for the university student publication. She suggested I title the essay “Words from a Dancer.”6 So I wrote it, in particular for my adored teacher, becoming totally enthralled with the process of finding words for dancing. I now see in that first essay the seeds of phenomenological reduction and intuitive description. At age twenty-­two I wrote, “Dance is immediate and fleeting: the body supremely alive in the present which is ever becoming, leaving behind a wake of silent expression.”7 Eddy’s research and perspective on the development of somatic education and practices help me understand more about my own dance history—my broad interests in dance, studies of Expressionism (U.S., German, and Japanese), and publications in existential phenomenology that support somatic ventures. In preparation for retirement from university teaching at the State University of New York, I initiated the Eastwest Somatics Institute, a teaching institute dedicated to the study of somatics. I hoped it would be in place for my retirement so that I could continue teaching and learning outside of academic constraints as I aged, much as I loved university life. I want to thrive as an elder. I don’t want to buy into the myth of aging, that growing older means getting worse, doing less, and becoming passive. In my

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experience this is not the case. At age seventy-­two, I revived my interest in music composition, a college major and graduate study that had remained unfinished because I took up dance instead. Thriving at all ages is the work of somatics as a kinesthetic field of study and practice. Antiaging benefits of somatic learning are available through all of the arts. Somatic attunement has saved me many times.

Affect Attunement, Kinesthesia, and Matching Let us pause on this word affect, because it has several definitions. The one we cultivate in somatic studies is delimited to influences of movement and feelings associated with actions. Affect as the subject of aesthetics also applies to somatics. Somatics and aesthetics have an intrinsic bond through their core concerns for perception: its active and receptive aspects, and its affective hues. Beauty is just one affect and not the only concern of philosophical aesthetics; ugliness is as important as beauty in a full account of art. Nature and the body are potential subjects of aesthetics as well. We quite often describe the colors of a sunset, or an awe-­inspiring vista, and we notice the expressive capacity of the body. Merleau-­Ponty says that the body is already and always a form of expression, as he explains innate linkages between perception, movement, and expression: “All perception, all action which presupposes it, and in short every human use of the body is already primordial expression. . . . The spirit of the world is ours as soon as we know how to move ourselves and look. These simple acts already enclose the secret of expressive action” (original emphasis).8 In somatic studies, we are conscious of the expressiveness of the body in motion, where the person is lucid and flowing, or where the form thickens and seems stuck, for instance. Expression as an affective characteristic entered into aesthetic discourse during the eighteenth century, and beauty gained a subjective definition, as seen “in the eye of the beholder.” Until then, beauty was defined objectively through balance and proportion represented in classical qualities of the golden mean—the smaller is to the larger what the larger is to the whole.9 I have been publishing on dance aesthetics and philosophy since the 1970s, and teaching in the field of dance studies just as long. Gradually, I learned how to include a somatic perspective. Small wonder I see a core relationship between somatics and aesthetics. My certification in the Feldenkrais Method, study of the Alexander Technique and craniosacral therapy provide me other avenues for exploring affectivity in terms of human potential. All of these somatic practices develop complementary skills involving movement, touch, and perception. They conjoin movement and touch in considerations for affect and tactile-­kinesthetic awareness. My experiences of Zen meditation in Japan and long-­time practice of several forms of yoga expand my concerns for affect on Eastern grounds, as does butoh, a dance form originating in Japan, which I explain shortly.

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We at the Eastwest Somatics Institute have been very interested to articulate the intersection of aesthetics and somatics in our work, since both are grounded in intrinsic values and therefore are founded in perception and experience. We learn through the study of value theory in philosophy that extrinsic values depend on intrinsic experience. What we value begins with felt (or psychic) states. 10 How we carry values out into the world and apply them is an extrinsic use of inner experience, not inferior, but connected to inner life and a sense of worth, eventually applied or made use of. Value is another word for worth. Before the conscious mind connects the dots, we have already embodied what we value, experientially. In my teaching of somatic practices, I use everything I have learned to assist human development through movement, touch, and aesthetics. Most significantly I understand how we learn through various modes and processes. Educational theorist Howard Gardner in his famous Frames of Mind, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983) identifies seven main modes of learning as (1) linguistic, (2) logical-­mathematical, (3) bodily kinesthetic, (4) spatial-­visual, (5) musical, (6) interpersonal, and (7) intrapersonal.11 Gardner’s work on ways of learning and knowing continues, aided by his team at Harvard. After the publication of his first work, he identified two more intelligences in Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (1999), the first of which he believes should be added to the basic seven: (1) naturalist intelligence, as an ability to draw upon features of the natural environment, (2) and existential intelligence, which signals human concerns with ultimate issues and the nature of existence.12 Most telling for our work, Gardner identifies bodily-­kinaesthetic intelligence as a major mode. This is the very important and often passed over way of learning that typifies movement-­based somatic studies. Gardner also includes intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence, other key elements of our work in somatics, which entail the ability to understand oneself, especially one’s feelings and motivations, and also speaks to building relationships with others. In Gardner’s view, these involve gaining the ability to regulate and improve our lives. This speaks especially to the building blocks in somatics that we have discussed— experiential knowledge, self-­perception, and perception of self relative to others and the world. Those who show talent for bodily kinesthetic learning are dancers, athletes, and musicians, but people commonly exhibit more than one dominant way of learning, and as Gardner emphasizes, children (and, I would add, adults) need to experience all modes, even as teachers ought to recognize and encourage the child’s individual talents for learning. In my mature years, I have taken on the special challenge and pleasure of working with those who desire to improve their lives through movement. As part of this, I enjoy helping people find their own intrinsic dances waiting to emerge, especially those who don’t define themselves as dancers. At the same time, I appreciate that not everyone learns primarily

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through movement and dance. That doesn’t mean that they can’t have valuable experiences in these modes of learning and interacting. Adult students in my continuing learning classes in St. George are eager to experience the dance processes whenever I introduce them. At Eastwest, we teach several intrinsic dance processes that can be fun or therapeutic, depending on the situation. As a university teacher of improvisational dance, I learned how to remain available to individual responses. I now call the improvisational processes we do “intrinsic dances,” to denote their experiential aesthetic bases. We consider them to be developmental adventures in risk and confidence. When people build confidence as they learn through experience, they are much more apt to venture into even more difficult tasks. Leaving comfort zones to venture out is analogous to a very important learning stage in infancy, as the infant hazards moving away from the comfort of the mother, all the while checking to make sure she is still there. Constancy of the mother, or a trusted person, provides the secure base for individuation.13 Although Gardner shows musical, visual, and verbal learning to be special avenues in themselves, we can see how these overlap kinesthetic learning. All learning involving bodily acuity depends on kinesthesia, or the sense of body motion. Kinesthesia is often used interchangeably with proprioception, bodily sensations relative to position, effort, space, time, and change. Both tactile and kinesthetic, touch is involved in the haptic sense. Put most simply, without proprioception, which allows us to perceive instances of movement, touch, and change, we would not be able to orient our movement. We could not speak, write, paint, or play a musical instrument. Movement through space would be impossible. Proprioception underpins the fuller dynamics of kinesthesia, the sense that allows us to feel ourselves in motion, and to respond to proprioception in whole flowing forms, or conversely in stuttering ones. Kinesthesia is there from the very beginning, and can be observed in fetal development and later infant life. Infant psychiatrist Daniel Stern describes this in terms of “core self” and “affect attunement.” Stern states, “In order for the infant to have any formed sense of self, there must ultimately be some organization that is sensed as a reference point. The first such organization concerns the body: its coherence, its actions, its inner feeling states, and the memory of all these.”14 Kinesthetic processes take place in gross motor activities, but they flourish especially in slow, gentle movements for fine-­tuning, especially the affective and perceptual influences of movement and touch that are the bedrock of movement-­ based somatic studies and practices. Slow and gentle movement allows people to pay attention to affects. When I taught in Japan, I learned how to say yasashiku-­ yawarakaku, which encompasses “slowly, softly, and gently.” I also discovered that the Japanese have a special relationship to slow time, witnessed in the tea ceremony, butoh, and Zen meditation. Conversely, they ply the other end of

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somatic affects in colorful festivals with loud drumming and cavorting through the streets. Stern’s term affect attunement describes interpersonal exchanges between infants and mothers in which the mother matches the dynamics of her infant’s movements and vocalizations (as in fig. 8). Stern points out that the dynamics are qualitatively matched in a kinetic-­affective sense.15 In our Eastwest somatic practices, we use a similar qualitative synchronicity, whether with infants or adults. We use matching through touch in developing tactile-­kinesthetic rapport in our work with individuals, and to some extent in partnering processes. Matching through movement can be used as a teaching approach with groups. Walking offers a special opportunity for this. Learning how to match the walking of others in pairs and eventually in a group involves total kinesthetic absorption and offers the opportunity to respect individuality in a cooperative framework (fig. 9). Walking is suddenly doubled and confirmed in motion. We cultivate this word “attunement” in our work, which suggests the infant-­mother relationship and also musical harmony. Affect attunement, as interpersonal exchange with tactile-­kinesthetic matching is a way of listening to the body and moving in harmony with another person. One might even match oneself, as suggested by Elizabeth Behnke, who first wrote about matching as a somatic principle and technique.16 In our work, we speak of attunement or matching, since they become the same in somatic exchange. What comes naturally in the infant-­mother relationship can also be learned to great benefit in finding resonance in somatic learning and therapy. Matching creates Figure 8. Kay Nelson matching the movement and affective dynamics of her grandson Lincoln, as he learns how to roll over. She follows and supports the kinesthetic flow rather than leading. Lincoln is happily in charge. Photograph © 2013 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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Figure 9. Sondra matches a student’s walk while encouraging him to float his head upward. She attunes her own body to the pattern she matches, and at the same time directs the flow of his movement subtly forward and up, as in the Alexander Technique. Photograph courtesy of Sondra Fraleigh.

safety, allowing the somatic practitioner to self-­attune and join the movement of individuals before offering guidance or introducing new options. In matching movements of others, practitioners first seek harmony in lines of least resistance. They can then listen for what untried options may be available to movers in a hands-­on patterning sequence, or to the dancer in the dance. Matching has both micro and macro manifestations in other words. Matching a partner in a Contact Unwinding dance involves attunement to small details and also the unfolding of large movements through space (see more on Contact Unwinding in chapter 12 by Karin Rugman). Matching a student or client through tactile, kinesthetic attunement in hands-­on flow repatterning is often more subtle. Nevertheless, as principles behind specific methods, affect attunement and matching are at the heart of both. In principle, matching creates empathy through unification. In practice, matching affords opportunities for finding unity and difference. In matching, both participants are required to surrender to unknown variables that inevitably appear in the give and take. Neither partner has an advantage, nor do they seek it. Rather, they engage bodily faith and transformative learning in the exchange of movement and touch.17

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Somatic Methods and Possible Selves Learning how to move with confidence and speak with clarity are two benefits of somatic development, and they are not so dissimilar. Verbal and nonverbal expression are inextricably linked in experience. We commonly gesture as we reach for a certain word or underscore a phrase. Movement, dance, and language are interrelated forms of expression and communication that can improve with practice. People flourish in safe environments in practices untainted by criticism. People enter somatic studies from several perspectives and for different reasons. Some want to learn to be somatic practitioners. Some seek personal benefits for their lives, and some hope to alleviate trauma and pain. The urge to explore aspects of self buried beneath cultural sediment motivates still others. If the body is culturally conditioned, it is also the means by which we can unhinge cultural conditioning, as depth-­movement dance processes attempt to do. (I provide an example of this in Dance Maps, the final chapter.) There could be several answers to the existential quest for the self, if the self can indeed be sought. Those who go directly to their bodies for insight seek the revelation of possible selves, or at least a glimpse of self-­limitations hidden beneath words and habits. Movement-­based somatics is not solely about working with talented movers or professionals, as we have said, even as achievement of excellence in performance does motivate many somatic teachers and practitioners. Somatic studies are much broader than this in their concerns for human development—or the discovery of possible-­selves as we like to think of it. At our somatics institute, we cultivate five main paths of practice: (1) Dance Experiences for Personal Growth, (2) Somatic Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation, (3) Sensory Awareness Processes, (4) Methods to Improve Performance, (5) Hands-­On Movement Education and Therapy. These paths of practice are large categories of study that branch into specific methods and narratives. One such somatically inspired branch of dance experiences is butoh.

Somatic Affects of Butoh Through an esoteric dance form called butoh (ancient dance), which originated in Japan after World War II, participants can imagine hidden arms waiting to emerge, what it might be like to dance animal origins, and how to appreciate “the weak body.” This form of dance theater, and its subsequent development as somatically inspired dance therapy, is now reaching around the globe from Japan, allowing the arts still another glance into the convergence of aesthetics and somatics. In butoh, ugliness and beauty, the rough and soft, morph and mingle. Weakness, pain, disease, and trauma also appear—and in odd combinations. Butoh dancers extend the spectrum of somatic affects to include what my butoh mentor Ohno Kazuo calls “the messiness of life.” They connect to nature

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directly by morphing through surrealist images of slimy fish, mud, shattering glass, chickens, and trees being invaded by insects, to name just a few. A plethora of images inspire “the body that becomes,” as butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi named it. Dancers can also construe images of their own, especially arising out of dream and the unconscious. In butoh, the dancer can let go of formalist principles and morph through unusual states and juxtapositions.18 I use my study of butoh to inspire non-­habitual expressive responses in students, and to assist them in accepting transitional states and change. Changing states draw the past and future into the present. This convergence is what Heidegger called “the ecstasy of time.”19 In dancing we can experience impermanence and awkwardness without anxiety. As moments of movement come and go, we can risk change, learn from it, and expand whole body responsiveness. It is important to acknowledge a full range of affective influences, not just the pleasant ones. An expressive range of movement underlies alignment, flexibility, strength, and coordination throughout the whole body. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” as Shakespeare wrote. Moving consciously with attention to the whole, and without denial, provides a strong foundation for psychological, cognitive, and perceptual integration.

Haptic Perception, Clearing, and Repatterning Haptic perception refers to touch and how we come to know the otherness of people and physical environments through touch. Haptic perception is essential in nonverbal communication. Recognition through touch and communication through touch is not an easy study, since it is fraught with cultural overlay and personal predispositions. Our somatic work with touch is objective, seeking a neutral beauty and stillness that allows the body to clear away clutter, to relax and renew. Clearing away stress and holding patterns in hands-­on processes is a major purpose of listening through touch. Flow repatterning of movement, finding easy developmental pathways through matching, and then providing guidance, depends on sensitivity to touch and movement. One cannot repattern movement without first finding what patterns are present through matching them. For us, clearing is an important aspect of matching movement, or matching the body, however one thinks of this. Through the interrelated techniques of clearing and matching, somatic practitioners learn how to move with (match) the bodily organization of their partner, how to follow the paths of least resistance through patience and not fixing, and how to introduce possible paths of movement that renew the nervous system or responsiveness of the person. This speaks to the ability of the body to organize movement on a higher level of function, once the brain-­body has recognized a new kinesthetic pathway.20 The body holds memories and is laced with habits. We can move beyond habits and provide renewal through tactile-­kinesthetic matching while respecting body

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memory. We find “not fixing” very important to improvement. Matching while not fixing communicates wellness through touch. In somatic bodywork, we are not “fixing cars,” and neither are we fixing people. Matching movement and touch is basic to Shin Somatics® hands-­on methods in bodywork, which we also think of categorically as hands-­on somatic movement education and therapy. The first phase clears away tensions and speaks to what is already present, to habit and body memory, or how the body is organized at rest and in motion. Clearing, as a starting point, pays attention to bodily responses in the moment. If significant changes occur right away, it is because the body of the participant is ready to change, and does so in reference to gentle touch. The second phrase also involves listening and congruence through touch, but introduces possibilities of new pathways of movement through matching and guiding. The third aspect is not a phase but an approach to the whole process, as we pay attention to expanding capacities along the way. What was not recognized, now is; what could not be done, now can, like smooth contralateral crawling on all fours, for example. Ascertaining change, or what the person has learned through a somatic process, is firstly a matter of self-­perception. What recipients say about how they feel and move is most important, even as practitioners also make observations. The practitioner holds a clear intention and does not become depleted. He stays alert to his feelings and observations, and as a result of matching can feel improvements, just as the student-­client does. The patience and subtleties of matching through touch require total attention of the practitioner, and effortlessness in his state of being. Some matters of form help him in this, like keeping the feet in full contact with the floor, feeling an easy stability in still points, marking beginnings and ends of phrases as in music while attending to freedom and fullness of breath throughout. The practitioner finds ease in his own movement while also providing support to another through touch. This is basic to attunement. Moshe Feldenkrais liked to speak about how to find “elegance” in movement, and he didn’t mean ornamentation, but rather an easy attention and reversibility. What goes away from a referenced point returns easily. These are all matters of moving consciously. In matching movement through space—in walking, dancing, or Contact Unwinding—the techniques of matching through touch and movement become more complex. In matching a partner’s walk, a feeling of support, of “being matched and appreciated,” is engendered. The walking of both partners is potentially unburdened. Matching the walk from behind with a light touch to float the occiput and the midback upward encourages a light and ascending momentum in the receptive walker. These are matters of moving consciously that inform the ease of both participants. Originally, I learned how to match walks in dance improvisations, then in Feldenkrais classes and in the Alexander Technique. In dance improvisations, walking in tandem can easily morph into dancing together.

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Of course, it is not possible to match every movement in a dance, but the partners can achieve rapport and keep the feeling of matching while performing dissimilar movements. For me, processes of matching through touch and movement are like meditations with listening as the ground. People often use the words “light, tall, effortless, smooth, and easy,” to describe their state of being in matching processes. Participants in matching have varying capacities to articulate their feelings about it, but I have never worked with anyone who wasn’t intrigued by being matched, and very many can verbalize benefits. The results are usually articulated in terms of somatic affects: “I feel like running, I could walk forever, I just want to stand still, I feel so stable, I feel taller, I feel at ease. I feel more present, I can perform this difficult phrase in my new dance without a bobble.” Matching another person somatically through movement and touch requires one to learn many possible organizations or patterns of movement. Patterning processes teach patience, as they involve self-­moving before trying to match the movement of someone else. Conceiving of movement in patterns helps the practitioner in structuring a somatic bodywork session, or choreographing it, as we think of it. The hands-­on practitioner experiences the patterns before introducing them, and she knows that the body of the other will be individual and not a replica of her own. Aspects of improvisation, another paradigm from dance studies, also enter into the process. One needs to be ready to change spontaneously according to individual differences in bodily temperament and habitual response. A typical query might be “How does this person move already?” Organic patterning matters in this, and so we turn toward origins, exploring pathways of infant movement development, curling and uncurling from embryo, experiencing comfort in back lying, rolling to get the body onto the front, pushing up from the floor with the hands from front lying, spiraling to sit up, coming to crawling on all fours, bear walking on all fours—and finally standing, walking, pulsing, and dancing. Yes, happy infants do dance in little jigs, with falling and getting up as part of the dance. All of these are developmental ways of moving. They involve affect, and haptic perception, first developed in prenatal life and then continuing through the infant’s need to be held and touched in loving ways. In our work with adults, we turn the word love toward respect, developing a neutral listening touch. With babies we also listen. We let them lead, while we follow in our holding and manner of touch, as we mirror their expressions, gurgling, smiling, laughing, or crying. We can also counter these intuitively to calm, or to encourage a sigh, a pleasing curl-­up, or back extension. Matching is done in an attitude of not fixing. We seek to work with the innate wisdom of the body. It is interesting that “to be touched” also refers to an emotional congruence. To say, “I was touched by your dance,” implies congruence through touch, the tactile-­kinesthetic sense, and this is movement and touch at once, as also emotional responsiveness. Life stories sometimes arrive as a result

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of somatic attunement through touch and in dance and movement processes. When they do, we encourage people to write them down, to be with them, and let their stories teach them. We also listen to what they say, being responsive and not stealing the story by substituting our own. The witness who listens provides an open space for people to understand their stories better in the telling. Matching develops observation, witnessing, and listening, rather than fixing. Emotional overtones arrive on their own, not needing to be excited or elicited. The somatic practitioner accepts a natural arrival of emotion, as it may appear in movement, dance, or story. She also draws appropriate boundaries. Screaming, for instance, may have a place in an individual session, but is disruptive in a group. Venting is not what somatics is for. Learning and changing is.

Autotelic Purpose and Tonic Flow I haven’t had time to return to music as a primary interest until this time of my life. I’m seventy-­three as of this writing, and composing music like a foreigner with birthrights. Now, I belong to the digital information age, and have been invited to speak and write on technology and the arts as well as electronic music and the body with resulting publications.21 When I began to compose music in my youth, it was excruciating and time-­consuming. Now it is fascinating and fun, because I can plug my Midi piano keyboard into my computer, choose from orchestral or synthesizer instruments, improvise, compose the results, and see the complete score appear before my eyes. Curiously, in the first instance of this process, I’m trying to match the keyboard with my feelings. Then I match the sounds that emerge empathetically. I’m not necessarily trying to surpass or master myself, rather I want to know and hear what is already there and on the verge. I also know that I am doing this for love of the activity—or stated more objectively—for autotelic reasons internal to the process. Somatic studies emphasize autotelic purposes—doing something for its own sake, as in yoga and Zen where all work is seen as equal. In these perspectives as in somatic processes, we work not toward a particular end, but to be in the enjoyment and flow of work itself. The end takes care of itself. The attitude of matching and not-­fixing plays a somatic role in this. I can employ non-­judgment as an overarching quality in my somatic attention to any project including performance. Aesthetic decisions in performance are part of the fun and the art. Selectivity and finding excellence can also be its own reward. Singers and actors have been some of the most avid students and clients of somatic methods since the mid-­twentieth century, especially of the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method. When I make music, I imagine an ideal listener and feel the other in my process. I feel connected to a larger whole. My creative activities have nothing to do with seeking appreciation; rather, they spark a spontaneous emergence of some unplumbed essence of my being. My fire awakens when I make music and

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when I dance. The wonderful thing about creative engagement is that I don’t need to feel isolated and alone as I age. I am not getting worse. In my visible body and my hidden arms waiting to appear, I am renewed. Music and dance are guardians of my youth. I can continue to learn if I risk failure, give up self-­judgment, and stay present with curiosity. With this perspective, I can reinvent myself, daily. Many things are better because they are older, including people, antique furniture, and Murano glass. I would much rather have traditional deep-­red, gold-­decorated goblets from the Italian city of Murano than any of their modern chandeliers or glass replicas of Picasso paintings. By the tenth century, this city island off Venice had become well known for glassmaking. The difficult-­to-­achieve red of traditional handblown pieces is still most prized. New is not better, and youth is not more valuable than age. Such considerations for affect and age have everything to do with moving consciously. As home, the body is a safe place of refuge and return. I call this safety and bodily ease “magical neutrality” or “tonic flow.” It is a feeling that we have everything we need, and can relax if even for a short space of time. This relaxation into the home of the body is an important interval in consciousness, a healing sustention. In relaxation, we trust ourselves, and are not estranged, or uneasy. On a biological level, the body as home can be explained through homeostasis. Antonio Damasio’s books elucidate homeostasis as a somatic and biological value, a necessity for health and survival. The human organism seeks dependability of its internal milieu amid the onslaught of environmental and social variability. And there are biological reasons for this. Biological value is like other forms of value (or worth). Value is worth, most basically, something precious like real diamonds or at least something fake that you may really like to wear or to own because of how it is crafted or who gave it to you. Money is a form of worth, as we know, but not the only form. Worth and value are sometimes measured, although we don’t always want to measure objectively. It may be that something of value seems so, intuitively. I value my friend and don’t really know why. It is simply so. Well-­being assumes value at another level, that of a valuable life. People who seek well-­being are interested in optimizing their lives at any age. Well-­being may not determine happiness, but it opens one of its doors. I believe happiness is not found, but rather it is generated, daily, consciously, in doing things that give us pleasure or bring a sense of worth. I like to dance, for instance, and to take walks and naps. I like to make music, and go out with friends. I like to have dinner every night with my husband, and talk about all the places we have traveled together. These memories make me happy in my home. Oh, and I love to teach! According to Damasio, there is a small range of biological variety in homeostasis. We may skirt the edges of this balancing principle, as we do, but there will be a pull toward home base. In music, I think of this pull toward home as tonic, as middle C in the key of C, or another key that represents resolution

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of tension. We can play in the easy key of C on all the white keys of the piano, and go away from C by venturing a black key now and then, but it won’t feel finished until we have returned, or we at least finally rest on some note that has been prepared in the chord progression, a chord that contains C, maybe, or one closely related to C, like A minor. If we are clever, we can fool the ear into believing it has come to rest through progressions of chords that create a new tonal center. We can make music that has tonic flow and finish, albeit with some aesthetic surprise, or be satisfied with a more chaotic arrangement. Sometimes chaos can work in music, as also in dancing. Cacophony is its own reward. But organic matters will nevertheless assert themselves through body and biology. Noise is not what we want at home. Harmony and balance are part of the routines of having a home, of taking pleasure in our bodies, of finding a pleasing equilibrium, of enjoying safety and well-­being. Humans can balance on one leg for a while, as in the yoga Tree pose, but that isn’t a functional position, if one ever wants to move. Ordinarily, the body seeks balance from two legs, as in walking. Stability in biological states of the organism is not stand still. Stability is not immobility. Over time, that would be death. As for chaos, I want to know which way to turn if I’m trying to get somewhere; or if not, I’m happy to meander. The latter would be a momentary and voluntary chaos. Perpetual chaos of not knowing which way to turn cannot be sustained in the body or in music. I once saw someone stand in the middle of a room seeming imprisoned, trying to decide which way to get out. Finally, someone went in to rescue her. She couldn’t decide which way to move, and this went on for a distressingly long time before she got out with help. Did I witness a somatic pathology about decision that manifested in a frozen dance? I remember it this way. I asked students how they might work with similar body freeze, which is not so uncommon. People do freeze up emotionally, hopefully not for long. Would development of flowing motions help, I wondered? It may seem counterintuitive, but flow is not just the opposite of freeze; flow is also important to stability. It implies an even energy or current, from place to place or in-­place, and circulation in the body. The flow of emotion is important to the fluency of homeostasis, as we commonly speak of “not getting stuck.” I liked the answer of the student who would have constructed “a dance maze” as an antidote for somatic freeze, a maze to move through intuitively and for the fun of it without any obligations to decide which way to go out. The student’s hypothesis was that moving through the maze would substitute the affect of “fun” for “freeze.”

Somatic Provocations Allow me to explain the breadth of somatics further, turning toward affect in another way, to high-­level dance performance, which seems remote from gentle

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somatic modes of movement for personal growth. Pina Bausch, a German choreographer and one of my favorites, is a special case in point. She sometimes uses punishing movements in her dances—dancers falling down on rocks, or hanging by their hair, for instance. This is what Roslyn Sulcas, a dance critic for the New York Times, has to say about Bausch’s “World Cities,” featured as part of the London Olympics in 2012: “Bausch’s work is rarely discussed in terms of its dance vocabulary, its kinetic or dynamic subtleties of physical invention. What watching 10 works showed most dramatically was her extraordinary ability to extract an essential movement quality from each performer and to create dances of great intricacy, subtlety and gestural power—sometimes delicate, sometimes brutally forceful, always looking in some way essential, as if we too could move like that if we were alone, hearing that music.”22 Sulcas describes several somatic properties in terms of dance and movement: individuality in performance, the distillation of essence, intricacy, and subtly of movement and gesture. Gestural qualities are not always cultivated in dance, but they are apparent in explorations of imagery in Bausch. Her inventiveness draws on gestural communication and signals. She clearly understands affect and its theatrical potentials. Sulcas mentions a movement range from delicate to brutal, naming several somatic qualities in the performance description above. Bausch’s choreography reflects her vast somatic processes with imagery and her inclusion of dancers in the choreographic process. The dancers’ impressions form part of the cities where they performed and became part of “World Cities.” Bausch’s inclusiveness of individuality adds variety and encourages ownership. The dancers are not dots in space or on stage, but people with faces and personality. The stylistic result is surreal and also abundantly expressive in drawing tactile portraits of happiness, doubt, and suffering in human life. I experience her work as alive with somatic valences, not all pleasant, and too numerous to pin down with words. This is a reason to see her dances, to let them resonate with my own somatic distress and awe. Much dance in the theater is formally constructed, abstract, and rule bound. Bausch and also some U.S. choreographers such as Bill Jones represent a break with formality, as though they might catalogue how many ways humans feel emotion, how our lives are constantly emerging in the moment of movement, in community or loneliness, and ambiguously. Bausch’s process toward choreography emerges psychologically, physically, and often from the dancers as they collide with images in explorations provided by her. The conflicting emotions and gestures seem to me a kind of trickery, an intentionally confusing koan manner of drawing forward performance material. As in dance processes of effective choreographers, ineffable somatic affects (feelings or emotions) are distilled. As an audience, I like to be baffled: at the very least, I don’t want to be bored. In my bewilderment, somatic nuances may be awakened.

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Soma and Healing All movement is somatic, inescapably so. The job of a somatics teacher or therapist is to notice the somatic dimensions of movement, name them when possible, and to use them for the benefit of participants, be they performers, students, or clients. For me, beneficial uses of movement are more important than impressive ones. Movement and performance can be conceived intentionally for purposes of healing and learning, their somatic, perceptual properties cultivated for personal and professional growth, and in community. To move consciously is to move with a purpose, and this supposes that we move in a world of others with others in mind. In this we are seen, and we see. What we touch touches us. Soma would simply be a floating unconnected sensation of self if we were not aware of others as also constituting consciousness of self. This implies that affect arises in relation. Love and sorrow are affective feelings that arise because we care about and for others. From conception on, we influence and are influenced by others, moving and touching—upsetting and shaking—quieting down, looking and being seen. I want to suggest that we seek connections through being seen. Certainly we don’t want to be invisible! (Well, sometimes we do!) What if we could actually practice connectivity? What if our communications could be more conscious, not like a planned performance, but more spontaneous? A performance is not merely a show; it is also a manner of functioning and points toward the accomplishment of something. Performativity is relevant to somatic studies, from personal effectiveness to artistic presentation. All movement has somatic feeling tones. We might call these tones kinesthetic felt dimensions of movement. Indeed, movement is key to feeling and emotion, as attested in phenomenological narrative and neurobiological brain studies, as we pursued in the first essay. We don’t usually pay attention to how our movement feels, or consider its affective and motivational potential. Dance in its first and most innocent manifestation is about the freedom of moving with attention to the feelings that emerge. In other words, we dance to feel good, to celebrate, to bind community, and for sociality. These purposes are not always primary in dance as theater. In theater we generally dance out toward a viewer, another. Sometimes the somatic and performative purposes blend. For instance, audiences can share journeys into self and memory with Bausch’s dancers, in part through the somatic processes embedded in the choreography and performances. Dance as theater is an important kind of communication, but we should not lose track of the original purposes of dance: pleasure, freedom, praise, and the opportunity to listen to our hearts in the making. In our years of teaching dance for the theater, authors of this book have seen many abuses of these original purposes. The theater can be a very ambitious and ego-driven institution, but this would be a distortion of its original meaning.

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Ideally, it provides performances for reflection and empathic connection, sharpening mind and sense. Suffering, compassion, virtue, and grace ride on the horns of great theater. Its many positive ends do not, however, justify any means. Ruth Way takes this up contextually in chapter 8.

Movement-­Based Somatic Methods Because soma is not separate from who and what we are, the study of it crosses over several disciplines. We should distinguish movement-­based somatic methods from those of somatic psychology and psychotherapy, as we mentioned in the prologue. Somatic psychology is originally derived from the theories and practices of Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst and student of Sigmund Freud. Existential and Gestalt psychology, expressive arts therapies, and family and systems theory have influenced somatic psychology. Psychology in its inclusions of somatics maintains an identity in the discipline and study of psychology while leveraging some of the same backgrounds as movement-­based somatic methods. Somatic movement studies and practices evolve methods that use movement and touch empathically. I have already noted key innovators in this field. In the “Thumbnail Sketch of Somatic History” section early in this chapter, I quote Martha Eddy’s list of dancers who have developed somatics as a field. I would like to say more about them. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has contributed unique processes in responding to embryology, as also to the organs and systems of the body, and profoundly influenced what is now taught as developmental movement and experiential anatomy. Emilie Conrad is known as a healer who says that movement is what we are. She uses vibrational movements, embryology, spiral energies, pulse, and breath to affect change. Anna Halprin, a celebrated performer and choreographer, evolved life art processes in relation to creativity and healing through dance. More than anyone, she helped redefine dance as she turned art toward everyday issues, developing dance rituals that focus on community as well as personal healing. Joan Skinner’s releasing techniques, which I have experienced in several circumstances, use imagery to stimulate improvisational dance. She is the source of what finally became known as “release technique” in dance performance. Although this technique has morphed from its original impetus, it keeps alive the spirit of “letting go” and relaxing into movement. Nancy Topf’s work with dynamic anatomy aims for improvement in posture and movement through sustained focus on imagined actions. To Eddy’s list I would add several more imminent dancers. Gabrielle Roth, who died in 2012, also influenced transformational dance in her original formulation of the Five Rhythms, a progressive use of rhythm and music to move toward freedom and spontaneity. Peggy Hackney is another trailblazer in dance somatics through her inspired teaching and book, Making Connections: Total Body

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Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals (2004), as she examines movement influences on perception and connections in the body according to principles of efficient movement. Her process of body integration encourages personal expression and healthy interaction with the world. She told me in conversation that she wrote on fundamental patterns (breath, core-­distal, head-­tail, upper-­lower, body-­half, and cross-­lateral) from the “mind” of each pattern.23 The teachings and books of Andrea Olsen have strongly influenced dance somatics relative to environmental studies. Kimerer LaMothe also publishes extensively on dance in the natural environment and eco-­somatics. She is a dancer, philosopher, and scholar of religion, with a doctorate from Harvard, where she has also taught. Ray Eliot Schwartz is a dancer and arts activist who represents the integration of Somatic movement education and dance practices internationally. In the prologue, I cite new books that name still more key teachers, performers, and authors in the field of dance somatics. It should be clear by now that the field of somatic studies is not limited to dance, but that dancers are making a difference. We have adopted the term Shin Somatics to identify our processes at Eastwest Somatics. Shin is a Japanese and Chinese word that means “body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit” all at once. In Japanese, it also means “tree trunk” and “center.” Shin points toward wholeness of body, movement, and being. I write about how I came to understand the significance of this special word in the next chapter. Other authors in this book also explore Shin from their vantage points. Some Shin Somatics movement-­based experiences and methods we explore with students and clients are presented below in outline form.

Shin Somatics Processes for Somatic Experiencing Dance Experiences

• Depth-­Movement Dance • Responsive Dances • Transforming Pain through Dance • Moving with and as Nature • Contact Unwinding • Butoh-­Inspired Metamorphic Dance Somatic Yoga and Meditation

• Land to Water Yoga • Chakra Unwinding • Mindfulness Meditation • Movement Meditations Sensory Awareness Processes

• Flow Movement Patterning • Finding Details in Patterns

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• Focusing Image and Imagination • Holding Presence • Following Six Senses • Using the Camera as Witness

Shin Somatics Methods Matching Movement and Touch

• Matching through Movement • Matching through Touch • Matching with Flow Repatterning • Clearing through Matching • Dynamic Congruence: Moving With • Oppositional Paths: Moving Against • Holding, Giving, and Taking Weight • Supporting and Carrying • Sensing the Weight of Bone • Deep Listening in the Joints • Matching the Unconscious • Integrating Image and Myth with Movement • Relating Motion and Emotion Methods to Improve Performance

• Being with What Is • Suspending Expectations • Employing Discovery Modes • Releasing Command Modes • Communicating Consciously • Voicing Movement • Performing and Witnessing • Moving as One in Community Methods of Teaching and Self-­Learning

• To Start Here and Now • To Stay Present to Improvement • To Teach and Learn with Curiosity • To Practice Non-­Judgment • To Shine the Movement of Awareness • To Remember the Trickster and Get Crazy • To Engender Joy and Confidence in Movement

Overlapping Purposes and Common Tones The previous outline produces four general categories of somatic experiences and methods that sometimes overlap: aesthetic, educational, interactive, and therapeutic. The purpose or intention of the movement process determines how

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we think of it categorically. Consciousness matters, in other words. In cultivating awareness, we become more conscious, and we learn how to be more fully who we are. We also learn how to build better relationships through conscious communication, not leaving this to chance. We hope this outline will inspire even more somatic processes. Soma as whole body consciousness is interactive, ultimately. We touch and are touched as we move together and apart. Soma is deeply embedded in all of our movement, because we are bodily engaged as whole persons. Likewise, we are not simply self-­aware. Others and the environment are part of self-­perception. Ultimately, we are interconnected in social systems, and inseparable from natural environments and happenings. Discrete purposes of movement have overlapping tones or characteristics in experience. Movement can heal, and it can be a medium for educating the whole person. In this perspective, healing and education are part of a whole and related to each other. We can be open to learning through awareness and to improving through movement at the same time. The body has the capacity to renew itself through movement. The brain-­body can change, as we learn through recent studies in neurobiology. Such change represents new neural pathways, visual, auditory, motor, and kinesthetic—altogether new somatic knowledge. The senses reinforce and inform each other through the common grounds of body and environment. Somatically, we see color even as we touch our environment. At the same time, we smell and taste. Movement and vision inform all perspectives as we move our position or vantage point. If we want to see the mountain behind us, we will have to turn around. The body moves as a whole. Whenever one part moves, it affects the whole. Persons don’t split into parts of body, mind, spirit, or soul, however we might linguistically divide. Neuroscience also makes the important point that moral qualities like compassion are not separable assets but arise as part of human development, latent in physical bodily life and consciousness.24 Learning how to care for others and ourselves arises as we develop wholeness. We cultivate overlapping dimensions of somatic movement arts in Shin Somatics. Education, healing, and aesthetics are all alive for us in common tones and connections. We can, however, tease apart the threads that help sustain the whole. Developmental movement patterns often guide intentions of Shin Somatics bodywork practitioners. We consider a pattern to be a repeatable form, and patterns can come from many places, including music, art, and nature, or from the natural unfolding of infant movement, as the baby learns how to move in ever more complex forms and patterns. Affect attunement, matching, and flow repatterning are aspects of our work involving techniques of moving together and being moved. They can address dysfunction in movement, and through this, relief of pain.

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Flow repatterning has its foundations in infant developmental movement patterns: oceanic embryo, back lying, rolling over to front lying, spiraling up to sitting, crawling in varied directions, standing up, and walking. Sub-­patterns emerge from these larger ones. Dancing can become an extension as patterns flow together improvisationally. The quality of flow also applies to directional developmental patterns such as reaching and turning, and tensional patterns, such as pushing and pulling. The goal is movement integration, better balance, ease and freedom, fuller breath, stability with mobility, and especially more confidence and joy in the body. An integrated movement is a happy movement; it has buoyancy, snap, vigor, and flow. It could have many other valences as well. One thing we do know is that the owners of integrated movement will not fall down unless they want to, or slip on a banana peel. Movement patterning as a basis for somatics will appear in other contexts through the authors of this book. The next chapter explains the origin of Land to Water Yoga and its meditational aspects. It also explores depth-­movement dance and some of the central narratives of Shin Somatics. How did all this happen? Well, quite organically, I would say, and over time. When Martha Eddy, a prominent somatics teacher and historian, asked me to name the principles that guide my work, I answered as quickly as I could, and off the top of my head: Patience Objectivity Nearness Distance Not Fixing Not Judging Not Interpreting Not Knowing Not Doing Listening Waiting Accepting Allowing Presentness Softness Silence Gentleness Clarity Craziness

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Amazement Wonder Love Kindness Disappearance Reappearance Vision Sense Phrasing Rhythm Form Pattern Perception Play Music Poetry Darkness Luminosity Compassion

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48 / sondr a fr aleigh Notes 1. Sondra Fraleigh, “Das Warten: A Life in Dance and War,” unpublished article on the life of Mathilde Thiele, including photographs of her solo in Dore Hoyer’s Tanz fur Kate Kollwitz in 1949, 2003. PDF at www.eastwestsomatics.com/books.php. 2. Martha Hart Eddy, “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and Its Relationship to Dance,” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 1, no. 1 (2009): 5–27, 12. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 16. 5. Thomas Hanna, Bodies in Revolt: A Primer in Somatic Thinking (Novato, Calif.: ­Freeperson Press, 1985); Thomas Hanna, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Life Long, 1988); Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995). 6. Sondra Fraleigh, “Words from a Dancer,” Pen: Literary Quarterly of the University of Utah 50, no. 1 (autumn 1961): 10–15. 7. Ibid., 15. 8.  Maurice Merleau-­Ponty, Signs, trans. Richard C. McLeary (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 66–67. 9. For a history of “the beautiful,” see Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, “The Great Theory of Beauty and Its Decline,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31 (winter 1972): 165–72. 10. Intrinsic values are qualities of experience. For a comprehensive treatment of value theory and what establishes criteria of “importance” in values, see Paul W. Taylor, Normative Discourse (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1961). See also Resieri Frondize, What Is Value: An Introduction to Axiology, 2nd ed., trans. Solomon Lipp (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1971). 11. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 30th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1993). 12. Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 13. Margaret Mahler, with Fred Pine and Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation (New York: Basic Books, 2000). See also Louise Kaplan, Oneness to Separateness: From Infant to Individual (New York: Touchstone, 1978). 14. Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 46. 15. Ibid., 144. 16. Elizabeth Behnke, “Matching,” in Johnson, Bone, Breath, and Gesture, 317–37. 17. Our use of matching derives from kinesthesia and empathy, and is not the same as matching in organizational psychology, the study of workplace dynamics where matching is done to achieve advantage, as represented in the work of organizational psychologist Adam Grant and others. See Adam Grant, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (New York: Viking, 2013). Grant recommends that success in the workplace requires giving, not taking, and not matching others to achieve advantages. 18. I write of this butoh method initiated by Hijikata Tatsumi as a major theme of Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). See esp. 83, 157.

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2. somatic movement arts / 49 19. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 401–3. 20. The “brain-­body” is how neuroscience sometimes speaks of the brain as part of the body. The brain is not controlling the body but is part of it. 21. See Sondra Fraleigh “How Things Fall Apart: Alteration of Body in Music and Dance,” in Bodily Expression in Electronic Music, Routledge Research in Music, ed. Deniz Peters, Gerhard Eckel, and Andreas Dorchel (London: Routledge Press, 2012), 35–52. See also Sondra Fraleigh, “Soma Strokes and Second Chances,” Exhibition essay for Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media, exhibition, Columbia College, Chicago, February 8–April 2, 2010. 22. Roslyn Sulcas, review of Pina Bausch, “World Cities,” New York Times, Arts, July 14, 2012, 3. 23. Peggy Hackney, Making Connections: Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals (New York: Routledge, 2002); conversation with Peggy Hackney on her teaching and book, June 12, 2013, Kayenta, Utah. 24. Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-­Being (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 44.

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chapter 3

Dancing Becomes Walking Sondra Fraleigh

I began my career as a dancer doing what I love, lucky me. I performed in theater settings and taught dance in university systems for more than forty years. I began teaching in universities in 1962 when dance had few specialized areas of study. I taught it all. Eventually I settled into those areas that suited me best—composition, improvisation, modern dance technique (until my late fifties)—and I gradually added academic studies in dance with philosophy and aesthetics at the top of the list in terms of publication. I studied philosophy in graduate school along with dance, and also undertook a special study of philosophical aesthetics on sabbatical leave. Dance history and culture helped bring concrete examples to my writing, since philosophy tends to be abstract. Dancing became writing, and studying texts became a way of examining dance, movement, and the arts. I loved university life, but it wasn’t all roses; teaching in institutional settings never is, and to add to the mix, I also acquired administrative duties, a development that helped me in establishing my own institute later on. Administration was not my first choice of how to spend my time, but I learned a lot. I have invented myself in many modes over the years. One does this to remain vitally connected to the future. As professor of philosophy and religion Jacob Needleman sees it, the future is another word for the soul.1 Reinvention of oneself is necessary to moving on. It is soul work. Dancing outdoors in dedicated or inviting environments is one of the ways I invent myself in the segue between dancing and walking and in community. Figure 10 shows conscious walking as walking meditation in a section of our Eastwest Somatics labyrinth dance “Plant Us

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Figure 10. Sondra Fraleigh leads “Plant Us Butoh,” a community dance and movement experience at the Desert Rose Labyrinth in Kayenta, Utah. Photograph © 2010 by Teresa Koenig.

Butoh.” Figures 11 and 12 (they appear later in this chapter) capture moments of somatically inspired dance improvisations of the same event.

Reinventing Myself How did dancing become walking for me? How did crystalline embodiments and driving rhythms turn toward ease and introspection? And how did I find a sweet tension between dancing and walking, as also an invisible tie between writing and dance? Somatics as a word and concept entered into the lexicon of dancers and educators quite gradually. I was aware early on that the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method® were practiced sporadically in the fields of theater and dance. I knew that Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen was conducting in-­ depth research into body systems and movement patterning. Eventually I read and benefited from her book.2 In my early thirties I took several years leave from teaching after having a baby. When I returned, I began to include yoga and somatic explorations. For the following forty-­three years I experienced a drift from antiphony to cacophony, from concise, responsive theatrical form

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to noise—a sometimes ­frustrating noise that gradually settled into a pleasant, soft stride. Motherhood changed me, hormones and all. Yoga had a profound effect on my ability to find peace and some balance on the tightrope between work and home. Inventing myself as a teacher of somatics happened gradually and over a period of many years. In the process, I moved from center stage to periphery, and from speaking expressively, lyrically or otherwise, to listening. I never really gave up being a dancer or a committed teacher of dancers, but I learned how to texture my teaching with ordinary everyday movement, and how to find elegance in walking akin to dance. The best part is that my choreography and teaching are no longer just for the stage or for elite movers. They spread more widely to include children and the elderly, those in pain and suffering trauma, and those who want to experience the healing pleasure of moving freely through somatically conceived intuitive dance. My study of the Feldenkrais Method and craniosacral therapy inform this, as do my studies of Zen meditation at Zen centers in the United States and temples in Japan. Even before my acquaintance with forms of mediation in Zen, I was fortunate to encounter silent meditations in my yoga classes, including Hatha Yoga in the United States and Japan, Integral Yoga in India, and Siddha Yoga in the United States, which teaches an esoteric form of meditation with beautiful chanting. Eventually I learned to trust my body as my ownmost textbook, individual and instinctual. My body integrates the various modes and manners of my somatic adventures. Sometimes, after a particularly rewarding session of moving consciously, I lie down on the floor and ask my body what I have learned. It always speaks to me directly, sometimes in words, because I love words, but also in felt and global affect, as my awareness spreads widely beyond self. When I listen, I become a kinder person. In my Feldenkrais studies and eventual registration, I learned a method of teaching bodywork that springs from and supports movement of the whole person, identifying habits of mind to elicit options in movement and expand human potential. Such development can bring new awareness or relief from pain. It can also improve body image and confidence. In an interesting way, I moved my love of choreography and improvisation toward somatic movement patterning and facilitation of movement function through touch. Over the period since 1992, I have been developing my own method of teaching through touch—based on somatic yoga and gentle experiential anatomy in positions of rest, as also in standing, sitting, walking, and dancing. Now I teach the use of touch for well-­ being and expansion of consciousness. My study of choreography and music composition helps structure my approaches to touch. I sometimes ask myself whether consciousness can be choreographed. It is an odd way of speaking, but I would say yes, that in our everyday lives we do this all the time, but often on a dull level of awareness. To deliberately focus

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consciousness through imagery and movement is a fascinating kind of choreography that we in this book address, each in our own way. I understand choreography as a deliberate structuring of movement and conscious awareness. We can provide situations for renewal of consciousness in dance explorations, whether these are choreographed or improvised. I observed this happy circumstance for years in teaching choreography and improvisation. Now I see broad beneficial applications of these. Choreography is a matter of structure and conception of movement and can manifest in dance for the stage or in dance for everyone. Movement as medium can be structured to elicit the healing potential of the nervous system. It might be conceived under paradigms of dance, yoga, sports, or any somatic educational or therapeutic modality. Why would one want to participate in activities to expand awareness? Cultivation of bodily awareness is a major purpose of mindfulness, be this mindfulness as an expansion of mind through movement and dance, or mindfulness as moving in the wordless core landscape of the soma. Active imagination as conceived by Carl Jung might be an example of the latter, or focusing as taught by somatic pioneer Eugene Gendlin. In The Mindful Brain, Daniel Siegel writes that “when we become our own best friend, we become open to connecting deeply with others.”3 Compassion and empathy are possible outcomes of structured explorations (choreographies) of body consciousness. By the time I was forty, I included yoga and simple meditations in my dance classes, but they were not modeled on Eastern religions and spiritual practices, even as I had experienced several of these through yoga and Zen and would continue to learn how diverse meditation can be. I began to develop a somatic yoga that grew creatively, conceiving a simple method of teaching meditation that I explain shortly. Once in an early morning meditation that I had volunteered to facilitate for a university conference, someone began to giggle. Someone else joined in, and then another. I could see there was no way to save the situation, so I suggested we all just laugh ourselves silly—and we had a raucous laughing meditation. Ah me! I remember how important laughter is in Zen. Reason and control only go so far; absurdity sometimes wins the day. I credit my early studies of dance and music composition with instilling creative principles in my development. My early adventures in dance improvisation were also creative, as I turned inward for answers and studied existentialism and phenomenology. This area of philosophy led me to trust personal experience and responsibility. In my thirties, I started to write a descriptive aesthetics and phenomenology, Dance and the Lived Body, which was published in 1987 when I was forty-­eight.4 This book was eventually used in university classes on dance aesthetics and philosophy, as well as in dance and religion. The latter surprised me, since there is very little mention of religion or even spirituality in my book. Kimerer LaMothe used it as a text in her classes on dance and religion at Harvard. In retrospect, I see that my tendency to turn toward existential questions

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of being and the deeper purposes of dance propelled the book. Now I think of it as my first somatic treatise, since questions about the very nature of the body are at its core. In preparing my present calling, I single out my studies in my early fifties of the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education. It provided me a practice that extended my phenomenological concept of embodied wholeness, and it gave me theoretical and practical ways to understand how movement can benefit everyone, not just those who define themselves as dancers, athletes, or actors. I discovered a bodily form of education that used a paradigm of incremental movement, small movement, subtle movement, and movement for awareness and healing. In a word, I discovered “somatic education.” Dancing became walking and returned to dancing. One was not superior; they connected, and each could aid the other. A passage between dancing, kneeling, lying down, getting up, walking, and returning to dance, guided my somatic journey from dance for the stage to dance for everyone.

Mindfulness and Eastern Mentors The principles of somatic education guided my inclusions of yoga in college classes in somatics. Purely Eastern versions of yoga, since there are many, might have alienated some students, and I wanted to speak to both the West and the East. In teaching meditation, I cultivated silent sitting akin to mindfulness meditation, several versions of which have become popular in the West. Mindfulness is originally a Zen concept, now liberally imported to the West. It connotes unification and surrender to the present moment, without worry over the past or anticipation of the future. I now teach the healing values of silent meditation from my travels in Japan and India. The somatic benefits of meditation can emerge in a simple way, as I explain in “Meditation through the Lens of Shin,” later in this chapter. Beginning in 1985, I became acquainted with butoh, the postmodern dance of Japan, which expanded my understanding of the East and Eastern concepts of the body. Subsequently, I studied butoh in Japan, Canada, and the United States. It was not my intention to write about butoh in the beginning, but Shodo Akane-­Sensei, my Zen teacher in Japan, encouraged me to write about dance and Zen. In the process, I discerned relationships between Zen and butoh, and once more invented myself, now in the guise of the East with Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan (1999).5 Later, I wrote two more books about this globally responsive dance form, which is still evolving—Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo (2006) and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy (2010).6 Through study with butoh artists and writing about butoh, I became a butoh teacher. My inspiration and mentor in this art, Ohno Kazuo-­sensei (October 27, 1906–June 1, 2010), lived past the age of 103. My association with him continues through

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his son Ohno Yoshito, who is a year older than I am. The Ohnos’ approach to dance, both spiritual and somatic, continues its global influence. My studies of butoh were facilitated by invitations to teach dance for several months in Tokyo as a guest at Ochanomizu University. While there, I gained another mentor, Matsumoto-­sensei, who has been decorated by the emperor for her work with dance education in Japan. As grateful as I am for my good luck with mentors, it’s important for me to make good use of their guidance. Years later I was invited to India to lecture on topics of dance, phenomenology, and somatics. Parul Shah invited me to teach and choreograph at the University of Baroda, and Kapila Vatsyayan asked me to speak at the Indira Gandhi Cultural Center in New Delhi. Vatsyayan was director of this large center at that time, and a respected scholar of dance systems in India. My daughter, Christina, said that meeting her was like “meeting the pope.” Later I spoke in Chennai through the invitation of Anita Ratnam, a classical Indian dancer and scholar. Through these opportunities in Japan and India, I began to find my Western body in an Eastwest somatic framework. On many subsequent trips to Japan, I carried my Western body to the East and back again. I was twice invited to bring dancers to perform in Japan , supported by universities and Fumie Kanai’s professional dance company. I also traveled there to teach somatics. Now several of my Japanese students have become certified to teach and practice somatic movement therapy and education. Kishida Akiko directs and teaches a Shin Somatics® certification program in Tokyo.

My Quest for Stillness and Effortless Ease Kinesthesia is the fascinating sense-­of-­self-­in-­motion that grounds movement somatics. In the study of human development and felt life (sentience), there is no one way, and no one truth. My quest has been to blend Eastern and Western approaches to movement and stillness, and to remain curious as I continue to learn. The study of movement from a somatic point of view holds myriad possibilities. In parsing perceptual matters of movement, we can go toward improvement of performance (in sports, singing, dancing, and acting), toward therapeutic potentials of movement in terms of perception, and even toward healing potentials in terms of pain and trauma. Matters of communication enter in because of the expressive intent embodied in all movement interaction. I explore this in “The Ways We Communicate: Somatic Dance and Meditation as a Bridge.”7 Dance is poetry of the body, a special kind of body language and wordless communication. Mindfulness, being awake to the present, reinforces all matters of somatic sensibility. Stillness and silence bring answers of themselves. Like many, my personal quest has been to silence the chatter of my mind and to transform my pain body. I also seek the still centers of movement.

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Intuitive understanding and pleasure are the happy results of realizing effortless ease in movement. Healing can arise from ease as a sense of well-­being enters consciousness. A condition of quiet ease is termed the “relaxation response” by Jon Kabat-­Zin and others, and it also refers to the capacity of the brain to change according to whole body responses.8 In other words, we feel better when we can relax. We breathe better. We are not in a struggle or stress mode, but rather at ease with the world and ourselves. When we embody movement effortlessly and with pleasure, we can heal if only for a time. Healing, it seems to me, is a daily practice. When we multiply the times of feeling good, we create momentum and change in a positive direction. Ease in doing entails doing less to feel more, and building confidence through listening better. We have already said that participation in somatic processes can aid students in building self-­confidence, but here I want to say something about matching again, speaking directly to you as reader. You can learn how to match your own feelings and to respect them, not needing to control yourself or others. What would it be like if you could soften into difficult situations with curiosity, if you could listen and match circumstances without needing to have the answer? Answers could arise without effort, or at least not in the face of it. I want to suggest that confidence doesn’t need to confront, it meets and matches situations with a grace akin to cool. The Cool is a liberating aesthetic and cultural concept that arose through the African American vernacular, especially in music and dance. For me, cooler expressions have understated power and solitary elegance, like the jazz of Miles Davis.

Transformational Dance Somatics When I began to teach somatic work in the dance department at the State University of New York, College at Brockport, I started with movement patterning via my Feldenkrais training. The process of using discrete small and gentle movement patterns to notice the somatic effect of these is called Awareness Through Movement®. Eventually, I found that I could conceive movement patterning using paradigms of dance technique, improvisation, and composition (as I explained in the previous chapter). I developed my own somatic path by introducing simple dancelike movement patterns with embedded technical know-­how according to anatomy. Eventually, these matured as artful conduits for somatic compositions and improvisations. Matching, which grew first as hands-­on work in partners, took on a life of its own, and my dance students received it with gusto. Later I would invent Land to Water Yoga with all of its patterning processes and fanciful names to identify them, like Lazy Lizard, Sea Horse, and Mountain Stride. This somatic yoga also translated well to dance and to hands-­on partners work. Using its softer flowing elements, some of my students adapted our yoga for prenatal

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somatics. Michelle Akane Sugimoto Storey in Chiapas, Mexico, and Meredith Haggerty in Chicago each produced their own programs to teach prenatal yoga somatically. Meredith came to our work in an unlikely way. She was in a library at the University of Chicago searching for materials to help her with her master’s thesis in visual arts and embodiment. One of my books fell from a high shelf and hit her on the head. She says it was exactly what she needed. (What did she need, the book or the thump on the head?) I never tire of telling this story, and Meredith likes telling it also. She is a past president of Eastwest Somatics Network, with the purpose of furthering somatic movement studies. Meredith is shown in figure 11 in our “Plant Us Butoh,” a dance involving community participation at the Desert Rose Labyrinth in Kayenta, Utah. In figure 12 of the same dance, we see another moment through a spontaneous upward reach connecting a trio of dancers. As my approach to bodywork developed, I kept matching as a technique for touch, and expanded the repertory with easy to remember patterns out of Figure 11. “Plant Us Butoh” (2010) at the Desert Rose Labyrinth in Kayenta, Utah. Dancers are Kayoko Arakawa from Tokyo (standing) and Meredith Haggerty from Chicago. Photograph © 2010 by Teresa Koenig.

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Figure 12. “Plant Us Butoh” at the Kayenta Labyrinth in Utah. Dancers left to right, Keiko Kawagishi from Japan, Sondra Fraleigh and Susan Javery of St. George, Utah. Photograph © 2010 by Teresa Koenig.

somatic yoga. We had names for the patterns, but they were simply figures or forms until individuals brought them to life through movement and touch. When you name something, you identify and can remember it. I like to refer to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language on this point: “We name things and then we can talk about them.”9 Once a shape or movement pattern has been named, you can work and play with it, tease apart the smaller patterns that make up the whole, and even let it transform situationally. I learned a great deal about transformation through butoh, typified by metamorphosis, change, and feelings of renewal. Thus, I began to include butoh morphology as catalyst in all of my work. I might use butoh as a choreographic approach, or simply for its metamorphic essence, which people seem to catch poetically without the theatrical shell or movement forms that often typify butoh as art. Every time I introduce free-­form intuitive dance process into somatic activities, the students ask for more. In more ways than I can name, students have guided my choices in developing somatic dance approaches. My work now expands to somatically inspired dances in the environment and on camera. These are part of a growing repertory of Dance Maps, templates for my students and others that have been brewing for about thirty years. I have even learned how

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to make videos of the environmental dances for YouTube with my music in the background. What joy! With every new workshop I understand more about how intuition and pleasure manifest through intuitive dance processes, and how the possibility for excavating pain and trauma presents itself in atmospheres of trust and hope.

Meditation through the Lens of Shin My quest for silence and stillness enters into everything I do. Through the lens of Shin (Oneness), I teach a simple method of mindfulness meditation that attends to the breath, non-­judgment, self-­care, and forgiveness. Over time I developed a practical meditational style that drew on what I had learned in my practice of yoga and Zen. Nothing has assisted my personal growth so much as being a committed meditator, especially aided through extended stays in yoga ashrams and Zen communities. Even in these retreats from active life, I always knew my place would be in the secular world, and that perhaps I could bring my learning to others. I was after all a teacher, so why not a teacher of silence in the midst of the everyday? Moving into silence fosters resilience, clear thinking, and increases one’s capacity for compassionate listening. The latter has assisted my teaching and helped me understand the importance of not leaving anyone out—and in mindfulness terms—not ever giving up on a student. Being transparent about my own stumbling seems to help. Stumbling may be one of the most overlooked transformative movements in dancing. Falling is another. I have asked myself whether the somatic field needs to include meditational practices. The answer is in the question because somatics is a field that aims to develop perceptual awareness. Nothing clears conscious awareness to prepare one for an active life like the silence and stillness of meditation. But of course one can study meditation in various settings, and somatics programs also vary in their specializations. I seldom include guided imagery for meditation, but rather let silence itself be the teacher. I do not focus meditators on the unconscious. I would rather focus on what I understand, which is the power of being present centered. It is enough to pay attention to the breath, to assist people with this in the beginning, and to teach them a comfortable posture individualized for them, whether in sitting on the floor or squarely on a chair. Supporting one’s back in an easily upright posture becomes easier when preceded by somatic movement explorations. This becomes an advantage in somatic settings. I think it is fine for people to meditate from the comfort of lying down if sitting is painful. In lying down, one can feel support from the ground, connecting with the four cardinal directions and infinity. In sitting, one can be a conduit between heaven and earth, the axis mundi, if you will. In letting go, the timeless body becomes the teacher. Do you have to be a guru to teach meditation? I would say no. After all, the guru can be anyone, as I learned in India. Your guru might be your mother, your

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uncle, or some other person who is special to you. Guru means “the teacher who opens your heart.” In any case, not everyone teaches from the position of being a guru, and one doesn’t have to be perfect or a religious leader to teach meditation. I imagine that my many gurus in meditational practices were probably not perfect. They stumbled a lot, but they knew how to set the atmosphere for silent sitting, how to prepare people for this, and how to focus everyone on the power of posture, breath, and introspection. If there is one technique that has stayed with me in my quest for silence, it is how to send worries out on the breath, and how to let my thoughts flow by on a river. This is an image, and I say I don’t use these. Well, I use very few, and I try not to guide people through an entire mediation with words. Silence is the teacher, and one’s own liminal consciousness, outside of time.

My Teachers Expressive movement (is there any other kind?) is another element in my approach to somatic studies. How could I have missed this? Well I think there could be unexpressive movement, but only as a matter of interpretation. Movement is expression. I learned how to pay attention to expression with Mary Wigman, an important root of expressive dance in Germany. I studied with Wigman on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1965–66. Through her, I enjoyed a stylistic expressive link to dance and connections to dance therapy. Mary Whitehouse and other pioneers of dance therapy also studied with Wigman. By the time I went to Germany to study, I had already studied with German American teachers who trace back to Wigman. Joan Woodbury mentored me as a young dance student at the University of Utah, and later Alwin Nikolais gave me a perspective on abstraction in movement. One of my favorite German American teachers was Hanya Holm, who called me her “Kleine Sondra” and helped me win the Fulbright to study in Berlin with Wigman. I always knew I was a dancer, but I also have always benefited from good teachers. These came through German American connections, no doubt contributing to my eventual appreciation of the Dance Theater of Pina Busch, which has continued in my writing.10 I also studied extensively in the American schools of modern dance. I had the good fortune to study with Martha Graham and Donald McKayle, and in the postmodern period, Merce Cunningham and Viola Farber, the last of whom eventually became a friend. Elizabeth Hayes was chairperson of the dance department at the University of Utah when I earned my undergraduate degree there. She helped frame my interests in dance scholarship and research, especially dance history and philosophy, and concerns for kinesthetic matters of movement. I still have the first paper I wrote for her class, “Kinesthetic Perception in Movement,” and it seems

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that I’m still writing about this. I like to say, “nothing is wasted” when students ask me if they will use what they are learning. I received a master of arts degree in dance from San Jose State University, where Lou Harrison was a composer in residence in the music department. Through his guidance, I once again had an opportunity to resurrect the past. I didn’t want to waste my many years of studying music, including music composition. Harrison agreed to be my thesis advisor, and I wrote a guide to piano and percussion for modern dance classes, also learning much about music composition from him. He was a contemporary and friend of John Cage but eschewed the avant-­garde; rather he specialized in bringing Asian musical instruments into Western composition. Once more, East and West came together for me. Now I see through the window of my varied studies how a community of participants aids personal transformation through art expressions. What we call the “self” is somewhat a fiction. We are amalgamations of self and other through so many associations. Expiating sadness and joy through dance, we confirm our common humanity, and in the reflective position of writing we foster understanding and dialogue, also building community. Creativity develops consciousness. In retrospect, I see how I have drawn from Europe and America, from Japan and India, and from dance and music as also from philosophy and science. Like many who have a personal history with modern and contemporary dance, it seeds in my bones. My dance study has spanned from early styles of the twentieth century to styles of the early twenty-­first century. When I started to study modern dance, the early styles were in vogue. Now there is a plethora of styles and looser ways of moving. At a certain point, I stepped out of the modernist project altogether—through butoh. Butoh is an unlikely part of my personal dance history. I don’t know whether I pursue butoh or it chases me. Of course, like any dance form, it is just an idea until someone gives it life in a particular performance. My teachers still come to me in my dreams. I find myself wanting to please them. I have already spoken of my mentors in butoh, Ohno Kazuo-­sensei and his son Yoshito. There have been other amazing teachers who have greatly enlarged my understanding of and participation in butoh. I feature nine of them in the last chapter of Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, but here I want to acknowledge Yoshioka Yumiko and Nakajima Natsu, two great female butoh artists who have remained my teachers and friends, and Matsumoto-­sensi, my adopted Japanese mother and a pioneer of dance in education in Japan. She aided my travels and helped me gain access to butoh in Japan. I think of butoh as a somatic form of dance, and maybe this vision comes partly through my interest in dance as therapy. Butoh is a crazy, surreal path to the unconscious, and to my mind, it is a safe path. Moving with self and others in a supportive environment allows the submerged soma of the subconscious to come to our aid. In dance conceived somatically, we can excavate body memories

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and possible selves. This is so precisely because somatic conceptions of dance concentrate on what the mover is experiencing, rather than on impressing an audience. The attitude and focus of the performer is key. Thus any form of dance might be conceived with first-­person attention to the experience of the dancer or community of dancers. I was already writing about butoh when I began studying somatics in earnest. For four summers I studied the Feldenkrais Method in Marin, California, while during the academic year I was a professor of dance at State University of New York in Brockport. Of my teachers in California, I appreciate Larry Goldfarb, who first introduced me to the Feldenkrais work and remained a mentor throughout my training. I learned a great deal from his framing of experiments in movement and loved his sense of humor. Frank Wildman was my primary teacher in the Feldenkrais Method. I was lucky to experience his deep connection to the evolution of movement in animal and human life. When I asked Frank whether I should be studying to be a therapist, since my own back was in pain, he said: “your back will make you a master.” I remember this still today. I also benefited from the teaching of Elizabeth Berringer, who brought a structural intelligence to our work, and was often a guest teacher in my program with Wildman. The Feldenkrais work changed my life and perspective on movement and dance. I also owe much to Ann Rodiger, my teacher in the Alexander Technique. We were friends through our work together in dance research organizations, and she allowed me to take her Alexander training classes whenever I visited New York, which was often. I stayed in her loft studio and saw her in action, working with high-­level singers from the Metropolitan Opera. In my mind, her knowing hands are without peer. I have taken Alexander classes with others, but Ann has been and remains my Alexander teacher. Once upon a time, Ann said something magical to me: “Sondra, you have an uncanny ability to manifest new work in the world.” OK, I nodded with a mixture of disbelief and joy, “I’ll use it!” As more than a footnote, I need to acknowledge mythologist and folklorist Joseph Campbell. I had the good fortune to travel to New York to study with him for several seminars at the Theater of the Open Eye. This was long before Bill Moyers brought Campbell to television in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, a CBS special of 1988. His lectures were riveting, and he also gave good, pithy advice that anyone would want to hear. “Follow your bliss” was the one that stuck with me. He gave me access to interdisciplinary thinking and the relevance of myth. I also encountered the feminine mystery of the Great Goddess through Campbell’s teaching. It changed my consciousness of divinity and, thus, my life. When I’m working with imagery in somatic processes, I remember Campbell and his Jungian approach to mythic images. Now Jeanne Schul, one of my first students in philosophy of dance and later in somatic studies, has earned her PhD in Jungian Studies at my urging. She has also carried my love

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of Joseph Campbell’s teaching with her in developing the links between Jung and Campbell in her research and work (see her chapter 11 in this book). Nothing is ever wasted; or I should say, everything we do finds its way into the future. As for my study of philosophy and teachers East and West, this is another story, which I take up next.

Where East Meets West Holding Presence, being present to the moment and suspending judgment, is one of the narratives we develop at Eastwest. It is more than a concept. It is a meditative practice and philosophical ideal, both East and West. Heidegger wrote about the ecstasy of time, where past and future meet in the present.11 I can only surmise that his focus on present time came partly from his interest in Eastern philosophy. He openly admired Buddhist and Taoist teachings. Present time is oneness, lived in the being of our doing; not lived in effort, but flow and stillness. Present time is thus as difficult to grasp as our own living presence. The past and future are part of the flow of time, subjectively. They frame the present but need not limit it. When we dance, and when we move with awareness, we can be present with our attention, not hanging on to the past with regret or anticipating the future. “Live today,” my Zen teacher Shodo Akane-­sensi says. This is a matter of attention and probably also a metaphysical position that one can adopt. How shall I live? This would be a metaphysical question. And of course there could be many answers. Holding Presence is not simply about being present; it speaks to a position that one can adopt in relation to another person or in rich communitarian contexts. At Eastwest, we teach people how to be present to the concerns and dances of others, and this entails both verbal and nonverbal awareness. We can be present to the dances of others as a witness through responsive dance. We can at the same time be alive to what butoh teacher Akira Kasai calls “the community body.” In this case, we cast our presence widely and inclusively, not egotistically. Life implicates movement but is not hermetically sealed. Our ability to live richly involves being present in community, as African dance demonstrates. Newer cultures have a lot to learn from traditional ones. Individualism is rife in America, but it doesn’t make people happy. Dancing together does. I have learned present-centered awareness from three studies and practices— phenomenology, somatics, and Zen. These three seemingly disparate practices all teach non-­judgment. Phenomenology teaches one not to assume anything in advance, to suspend what one already knows, and to let go of prejudice by questioning presuppositions. The goal of this kind of thinking is to wipe the slate clean, so to speak, to see things (phenomena) for the first time. The definitional stance of phenomenology stems from tabula rasa thinking. Arturo Fallico, my teacher during my master’s study at San Jose State University, taught me this,

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and also connected me to existentialism through his book, Art and Existentialism (1962).12 From my first paper for him, “Dance and the Lived Body,” written in my early thirties, he encouraged me to continue in philosophy. My simple paper became a book twenty-­five years later, and my study of philosophy continues still. Non-­judgment in somatics may be compared to the suspension of bias in phenomenology, but it also takes on a Zen aspect, that of waiting and patience, finding stillness within movement and in the moment. Others in this book will take up non-­judgment and patience in several somatic contexts. I learned the most about this from sitting Zazen. In practicing Zen meditation, the very erasure of thought, or at least the attempt, releases the known. To be at rest in meditation is to be cleansed if even for moments of silence. In silence, in No-­mind, there is no judge. Phenomenology, somatics, and Zen allow me to be in the moment, and to forgive myself when I fall into worry or fear. I can always recover and start peacefully at zero. I adhere to Zen as a practice in silent sitting—in laughter, composure, and compassion. Sitting Zazen engenders forbearance and respect for suffering. I practice yoga to lengthen, to flow, and to unify. I have had several gurus in Zen, yoga, and phenomenology. For that I am grateful, and I will probably have more gurus.

Higher than Actuality Stands Possibility Zen emphasizes emptiness. Phenomenology and somatics do this in related ways, especially by erasing expectations. Martin Heidegger wrote in his phenomenology, Being and Time: “What is essential in phenomenology does not lie in its actuality as a philosophical ‘movement’ (‘Richtung’). Higher than actuality stands possibility.”13 I have said that phenomenology extends consciousness through the study of experience. Ultimately, it points toward possible selves. I employ this method in my writing and research because it provides a first-­person voice for the mover, choreographer, and teacher in me. Fundamentally, it allows me to continue to learn. Phenomenology is a difficult teacher. It requires one to voice what is not initially discursive but intuitive, and I would say “kinesthetic” in nature. The outlook of phenomenology is useful in somatic inquiry, precisely because phenomenology has a somatic basis itself, especially in its trust of intuition and the lived body, and in valuing descriptive accounts of experience. One might even say that descriptive phenomenology and somatics both have a source in self-­sensing. Like Zen, they revolve around bodily knowing and begin in not knowing. I zero myself in phenomenology, Zen, and somatics. A phenomenologist asks, “What is this thing,” this phenomenon, and doesn’t assume a ready-­made answer. In this mode of understanding, one goes to zero, erases assumptions, and asks

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consciousness to speak. This is a personal process, a dialogue with one’s own thoughts and writing that doesn’t depend on accepted theories. This doesn’t mean that one disrespects disciplined bodies of knowledge, but one does not depend on these exclusively. There is an inherent arrogance in the purely experiential stance of phenomenology, but once one interrogates intuitive knowledge, the self has a tendency to dissolve into larger frameworks of understanding. This is the universalizing tendency that drives phenomenology. Like phenomenology, somatics may seem too involved with the self, but its tendencies to integrate experience and to connect to others and nature are as important as its focus on self-­awareness. Care of self comes first because it is basic to the ability to connect. In excavating possible selves, we understand that consciousness is vast, welling up through psychic life, and that it has somatosensory sources in movement, touch, and stillness. We find precedent for this in both the East and the West, through phenomenology, yoga, and Zen.

What Is Shin?

Shin Shin Ichinyo (Body and Mind are One)

Shin is oneness. The logo for our Eastwest Somatics program is a calligraphy mark created in a few strokes by my Zen teacher Shodo Akane-­sensei. Its most immediate interpretation, he says, is “Body and Mind Are One.” In Japanese it reads: Shin Shin Ichinyo (the last word sometimes is transliterated as Ichijo). In the logo, Shin appears twice, once as body and again as mind. Body and mind are signified by the same word, Shin, which also encompasses the following meanings: heart, soul, spirit, center, and tree trunk—and, understood more esoterically—it means to be alive, incarnate, or embodied. Body and mind are not separable in Eastern perspectives, as also in the evolving discoveries of science and philosophy in the West. Body and mind are words that identify physical and mental attributes when we tease these apart from the whole. When we do this, we are separating analytically what cannot be separated in action or the living person. Consciousness is the embodied basis of mind. We function and live in a river of action, which is both physical and mental at once. The body thinks in movement and in tune

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with sense and perception. We don’t usually move after thought, although we can if we stop and say to ourselves, “I’m going to take a step forward now,” and then we do it. This would be odd indeed, and we would never get anywhere. We think as we move, moving at one with our intentions, or else we might “get ahead of ourselves” and fall down. Most of the time, we take movement for granted; we just walk. But we can also walk consciously, concentrating on particular features as we go. The brain is not commanding the feet to move us forward. Walking is far more complex as involving the whole person. Analytic philosopher of language Gilbert Ryle called the mechanical dualistic model of body and mind “the myth of the ghost in the machine.”14 The body is never an instrument, and the mind is never a ghostly command center. Movement is part of thought; it doesn’t come after. Thinking and doing happen as part of each other, not apart from each other. The brain is part of the body’s cooperative network as a conscious whole. Western phenomenology also discredited instrumental theories of body and mind by the middle of the twentieth century through the work of Merleau-­Ponty, Heidegger, and others. Brain studies in neuroscience confirm holistic theories of the body, developed in phenomenology through concepts of “the lived body,” holding that the body is more than physical material; it is conscious. Movement teaches us about whole body consciousness, as does Shin. In Eastwest Somatics practices, we bring Western non-­dualist philosophies and the non-­dualist Eastern perspective of Shin to everything we do. When Tamah Nakamura and I were writing a book about the founders of butoh, Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, I came across the word shin— not simply its linguistic meaning but its further symbolic and imagistic connections. The last section of that book, Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, details the butoh teaching of nine dancers directly influenced by Hijikata and Ohno. Ohno Kazuo’s son Yoshito teaches students to dance Shin, which he calls “the patience of not starting” and “the very center of the body,” also “heart of grass.” Thus, Nakamura and I titled Yoshito’s approach to dance “Shin” in our book.15 Yoshito says that Shin also represents a slow growing orchid that develops over a period of seven years. What beauty, what patience, what earth and heaven in a flower! Flowers, we also know from Yoshito, are his father’s favorite form of life. The legendary Ohno Kazuo, Yoshito’s father, embodies Shin in his own way, living three and a half years past the age of one hundred, dancing from his bed toothless and with an inner smile, waving his hidden arms gently, as I saw on my visit with him in his hundredth year. One morning after the publication of Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, I bolted upright in bed out of a deep sleep with the thought of Shin, accompanied by the intuition that my life’s work was already incorporated in the calligraphy of my Eastwest logo, Shin Shin Ichinyo. It had been there in front of me for years. I needed, however, to understand Shin in a butoh context, as poetized by my

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hero, Ohno Yoshito. I would carry this flower, slowly, in the right spirit; I would make it mine and eventually take it to hundreds.

India, the Mother, and Land to Water Yoga I began my study of yoga in my twenties with Hatha Yoga (physical yoga) and Kundalini Yoga (the yoga of awareness). Looking back, I see a yogic path lasting about fifty years. Since the year 2000, I have been developing a somatic form of yoga that I call Land to Water Yoga, inspired through my travels in India and elaborated through my study of the principle of constancy in human development—the unconditional love of the mother. I traveled to India to teach and choreograph at the University of Baroda and to speak about dance and phenomenology at the Indira Gandhi Cultural Center in New Delhi. I also wanted to visit Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram. During my travels, I discovered Integral Yoga at the ashram of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Gandhi’s philosophy of noncooperation with oppression had precedent in Sri Aurobindo, whose first ashram still stands in Baroda in the state of Gujarat. In Pondicherry near Chennai (formerly Madras), Aurobindo later founded an ashram that became famous around the world as a sanctuary for active meditation and Integral Yoga, his project of bringing peace and higher consciousness into the world. He taught that “transformation does not come by contemplation alone; works are necessary, yoga in action is indispensable.”16 I meditated frequently in his modest ashram in Baroda. He had died by this time, but I felt his spiritual presence and was renewed in the quiet of his ashram, set back from the clutter of the busy street of Sursagar. Principles of spiritual revolution seed in the life of Sri Aurobindo and are later realized in the world through Gandhi and ahimsa, his nonviolent resistance to colonial repression. The Frenchwoman who sat by Aurobindo’s side throughout her life was known simply as The Mother. As spiritual teachers, she and Aurobindo developed a philosophy of consciousness and moral action. They referred to God simply as the Divine, a vision not personified or given particular form. They taught the virtue of grace through surrender of self, and that meditation should be expressed in one’s work in the world. The Mother stands for the divine mother of all, offering unconditional love as constancy. If I relate this to infant and human development, I understand constancy as a mothering principle, an embodied security and feeling that we are whole and happy, and that our life is purposeful. Constancy comes from security and deflects worry, prompting the courage we find to explore. It is fitting in a sense that The Mother who sat beside Sri Aurobindo transformed through several cultures as she become a servant of the loving feminine divine. The Mother was born in 1878 as Mirra Alfassa in Paris, daughter of Maurice Alfassa, born in Adrianople, Turkey, in 1843, and Mathilde Ismaloun, born in

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Alexandria, Egypt, in 1857. From a young age, she recognized a spiritual longing for the divine. She recounts that between the ages of eleven and thirteen she had a series of psychic and spiritual experiences, and she later had the direct intuition of going to India to unite with the divine. This, she recounts, along with a practical discipline for its fulfillment, was given to her during her body’s sleep by several teachers, some of whom she met afterward on the physical plane.17 Land to Water Yoga had its beginnings in Baroda at Sri Aurobindo’s ashram, as I contemplated the empty sandals of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. It grew as I practiced simple physical yoga at the ashram for two months with a small group of acolytes. Daily I sat with Indian devotees at the ashram. Later I traveled with a friend from Switzerland to Gandhi’s ashram, situated on the bank of the Sabarmati River just outside Ahmedabad in Gujarat. I considered this visit a vital part of my yoga journey. During my several weeks in Baroda, I lived at the once grand guesthouse of the University of Baroda. My room was on the roof, and my bed was under a mosquito net. I lived with a friendly lizard and a cockroach, which I was told not to disturb. We three were to learn how to live together. I could walk out of my door and practice yoga on the roof, which I did daily, with the monkeys who lived there watching me. They were curious witnesses of my emerging somatic yoga. No harm ever came to me in India, even though I did catch a bad flu that I thought would kill me. My friend from Switzerland provided homeopathic remedies. I survived, and eventually thrived. My somatic version of yoga continued to evolve for ten years after that, and I wrote my book Land to Water Yoga and published it in 2009. It was an attempt to draw together inspirations from Hatha Yoga, Integral Yoga, and somatic movement education, especially grounded in my Feldenkrais registration. My somatic version of yoga grew episodically as I gained more perspectives on infant movement development, coming full circle to include the flow of dance and the meditative and metamorphic essences of butoh. Now human development from infant to individual is one of the narratives in my teaching of yoga. Most recently I have been developing the theme of constancy, from oneness to separateness in infancy.18 Constancy would be the unconditional love of The Mother that inspired me in India, or has always been there through the love of my own mother, who lived her whole life where I was born in Circleville, Utah, which is still a verdant valley and peaceful little place tumbling through time. I was lucky in the constancy of my mother, and I want to share this in any way that I can. None of us had a perfect infancy or a perfect mother, but I have witnessed how people can fill in the gaps. I continue to cultivate constancy through meditation and in non-­judgmental somatic processes. I chance to practice this and to improve at it through yoga, which is ultimately a work of constancy, forgiveness, and oneness. Dance brings spontaneous flow to yoga union and makes the stillness sing. In our somatic studies we explore oneness and separation as life narratives through Land to Water Yoga. The basis of this yoga came to me quite spontaneously

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as I progressed through five stages of infant movement development. These still provide the basis for my approach to somatic yoga processes. The sequence of the basic developmental phases also account for chakra centers in the body, or energy vortexes. Working developmentally with the chakras came to me with time and more experimentation according to sequential phases of infant life. Yoga students often remember, and sometimes release, bodily held stories, as they relate to foundational movement, curling out of embryo shapes and finding their feet, grounding the root energies of family and security. It is never too late to embody feelings of security and to let them resonate in one’s life. Indeed, we carry infancy with us for the rest of our lives, and there is a way to work with this developmentally and consciously in movement, conversing with the body’s history, its wisdom, and its frustrations.

Morphing through Pain and Depth-­Movement Dance Morph is another word for body. A metamorphosis is a complete transformation, a sea change, and a substitution of one state for another. Cell modifications are transformations, as are sudden conversions of money, or even makeovers. I wouldn’t be involved in the work of Shin Somatics if I didn’t believe we are capable of change in positive directions, capable of moving beyond psychophysical limitations by embodying emergent possibilities. Living in light of wellness entails not thinking of our body-­selves in terms of pathologies. In wellness, the actual can give way to the possible. As in mindfulness meditation and metamorphic dance influenced by butoh, Shin Somatics Depth-­Movement Dance is a therapeutic process relying on the total absorption of the senses and spirit. With this comes a rebalancing where much of what was out of balance makes itself known in the body, so one can take a proactive approach toward recovery. This is more than a personal quest for many; sometimes it is communal and national. Nathalie Guillaume, an advanced student at Eastwest and a graduate of Bastyr University’s School of Oriental Medicine, has been involved in the national recovery of Haiti, where she was born. Likewise, Kishida Akiko, who teaches Shin Somatics certification programs in Tokyo, has used her somatic expertise in dance and healing with Japanese communities after the tsunami and relatively recent nuclear disaster. Much theatrical dance training asks us to “endure pain,” to push harder, and to ignore painful difficulty or sometimes even injury. What if we could admit pain in the act and art of dance, as we do in therapeutic art processes? My experience with butoh has taught me to admit the pain body, to let it morph and move, and not to deny it. Moving with pain, we allow ourselves to feel the condition through movement, detoxifying the emotions and allowing the pain body to shift. Many art therapists believe the act of creating art influences brain wave patterns and endorphins released by the brain. However true this may be, creativity in art varies greatly, depending on the conditions and personal involvement of

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artists. The need for inter-­arts and interdisciplinary approaches to the understanding of pain can be witnessed in the growing fields of the sociology of pain, patient-­centered biomedical ethics, illness narratives, holistic theories of health, gender studies in relation to pain (women feel pain more acutely than men, for instance), as well as the development of creative arts therapy, and somatic approaches to dance and dance as therapy. I have included an example of Depth-­Movement Dance in the last chapter, “Dance Maps: A Guide for Dance Experiences.” I created the process of Clearing out of my own pain body. For thirty-­five years, I had chronic back pain that made it almost impossible for me to stand up for more than two or three minutes at a time without pain. I could dance, but I couldn’t stand. I learned how to dance my pain, to name and not judge it or myself. Improvisational dance encouraged my choices in movement, trust in the process, and surrender to an unknown outcome. If I couldn’t control the pain, at least I could join it, and move to a calm state where options could arrive. I started to understand that the nervous system itself can be recruited for healing. It can regain innocence and responsiveness, and give up stressful patterns. Clearing has become a major narrative and process in Shin Somatics as a way to clear away pain. It refers to clearing away tension in the body by letting go of limiting habits and holding patterns (I took this up in context of touch in chapter 2). This matter of touch and movement has informed my work for many years. Rather than holding on, we seek ways of letting go and finding flow in movement and image: tidal flow, drifting, coursing, streaming, and more. Robert Bingham’s chapter inquires into somatic dimensions of images, more specifically, feelings in the body as images arise in awareness. As part of flow repatterning, clearing is an image, and it also pertains to purposes of touch and movement. No one can heal if they hold on to physical tension and emotional anxiety. We seek to clear these first, so that the person can find calm. Clearing directly involves the breath, as we find noninvasive pathways to engage the breath in radiant imagery. Clearing is also apparent through intuitive dance processes. Participants often describe what has become clear to them through the dance, what has improved, or what they have learned. Clearing away obstacles or pain opens space for a better future. I see in my teaching now how something as simple as dancing from the heart space spurs personal development, more than I could ever have dreamed when I was focused on stage performance. Dancing becomes walking, and dancing becomes healing. Finally, we can turn all of this around to see it in a seamless flowing loop, how walking becomes dancing. If I have learned anything by dancing toward age and healing, it is that awareness is powerful, and love is even more powerful. “Hold love like an egg in your hand, not too tight or too loose,” as African Dance teacher Albert Opoku once advised me. Be generous and love will find you; be stingy and you will be stingy alone. Be grateful for each new day, for everything natural in yourself, and never

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curse the place where you stand. Would you were a wildflower growing petals with delight, your foolish butoh face blushing with absurdity. Notes 1. Jacob Needleman, “Is America Necessary?,” Parabola 32, no. 4 (winter 2007): 70–74, 70. 2. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-­Mind Centering (Northhampton, Mass.: Contact Editions, 1993). 3. Daniel Siegel, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-­ Being (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 322. 4. Sondra Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987). 5. Sondra Fraleigh, Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). 6. Sondra Fraleigh and Tamah Nakamura, Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo (London: Routledge, 2006); Sondra Fraleigh, Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). 7. Sondra Fraleigh, “The Ways We Communicate: Somatic Dance and Meditation as a Bridge,” Somatics: Magazine-­Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences 16, no. 4 (2012): 14–17. 8. Kabat-­Zin is the founder and former executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is the author of scientific papers on mindfulness and its clinical applications. He has also written Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (New York: Delacorte Press, 1990), and Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (New York: Hyperion, 1994). 9. Ludwig Wittgenstein explores this matter of linguistic definition in Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 66–77. 10. Sondra Fraleigh, “Images of Love and Power in Butoh, Bausch, and Streb,” forthcoming chapter in Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, edited by Nadine George (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 11. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 401–3. 12. Arturo B. Fallico, Art and Existentialism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1962). 13. Heidegger, Being and Time, 403. See also “The Preliminary Conception of Phenomenology,” 62–63. 14. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1963), 12. 15. See Ohno Yoshito’s butoh workshop on “Shin” in Fraleigh and Nakamura, Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, 114–15. 16. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, 6th ed. (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1995), 2:527. 17. The Mother, The Mother on Herself, 3rd ed. (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1998), 34. 18. Margaret S. Mahler, with Fred Pine and Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

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part t wo

Soma and Change

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chapter 4

Living Shin Catherine A. Schaeffer

Shin is alive for me in several ways that I explore in this chapter. Living Shin has enriched my work as a university professor, professional dancer, choreographer, and human being. I first reflect on my history in somatic modalities, their relation to Shin Somatics, and how this work has benefitted me professionally and personally. Second, I consider my applications of somatic knowledge to dance pedagogy, creating choreography, and the teaching and practice of yoga, healing, and wellness. In the final section, I discuss personal transformative somatic experiences and share key findings and insights that ground me in living Shin.

History: Journey to Eastwest During the fifteen years before beginning my training in Shin Somatics®, I studied and practiced in areas of dance science and somatics and so came to the Eastwest Somatics Institute as an experienced dance educator, body-­worker, and practitioner. Having studied and used some of the most well-­known somatic therapy reeducation techniques including Hanna Somatics, Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method®, Trager Mentastics, and Bartenieff Fundamentals, I would include Shin Somatics in this listing.1 My somatic roots began while studying for a master of education degree in dance at Temple University. In a course titled Dancer and the Dance Medium, I was introduced to the work of Stanley Keleman, Thomas Hanna, Irene Dowd, Moshe Feldenkrais, and Mabel Todd. Hanna described the soma to involve

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Figure 13. Studio portrait of Catherine Schaeffer. Photograph © 2011 by Paul Riggs.

“first-­person living, self-­sensing, and an internalized view of oneself.”2 His theories of sensory motor amnesia, his approaches to reeducating the neuromuscular system, and his somatic exercises continue to influence my work today. Keleman’s concepts of somatic self-­forming affected both my practical understanding of living and my personal artistic expression.3 I was particularly interested in the process of somatic transitions and his theories of emotional anatomy. Feldenkrais also acknowledged similar patterns between soma and emotional states. Through the Feldenkrais Methods® of Functional Integration and Awareness Through Movement®, people can liberate themselves from the narrow range of stereotypic movement patterns we learn in our culture and find a wider range of moving and being.4 My understanding of these concepts has matured over time and continues to permeate my experiences and observation of soma. In addition to these early foundations, the experiential curriculum of moving consciously in Shin Somatics continues to provoke the creation of visual art, dance, and poetry in my life today. The concern with the living body is part of all somatic education, and therefore for the somatic artist, part of the creative process. Art does not merely imitate life, or life art. Art is created from attention to what is felt and lived from within. My art directly embodies life that is lived consciously. My training in dance education at Temple was heavily influenced by Laban-­ Bartenieff principles. My thesis was a creative-­movement teaching manual

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based on Laban’s Effort Shape Theories for grades 6–8; in retrospect, I see the instruction was somatic in nature. These classroom activities often linked movement, texture, sound, and psychological investigations with art making. I continue to use these lessons to build aesthetic imagination in my students and myself. Over the next ten years I performed with a dozen professional dance companies in Baltimore, Washington, and New York. Some of these experiences were devoid of somatic sensibilities and rather damaging, since much dance technique is relatively narrow and artificial. Other experiences, particularly my work with Wendy Osserman, explored concepts of Authentic Movement, and although still rigorous technically and physically, proved much more fulfilling. In this company, choreography was found in one’s body and advanced between the dancers and the choreographer. Authentic Movement derives from the work of the pioneering movement therapist Mary Whitehouse, who defined the essence of the movement experience as “the sensation of moving and being moved.” In moving authentically, we experience a heightened awareness of conscious movement and of what is moving us unconsciously.5 It creates space for choreographic process to emerge through spontaneous movement and provides one way to reconnect to a conscious collective. This practice bridges many traditions: therapy and meditation, individual and community process, and ritual and improvisation.6 The form also explores the relationship between mover and witness, of being seen and seeing. These rehearsals in New York were comparable to my subsequent participation in Shin movement sessions, which include holding presence and connecting with self and others in presentation and performance. In her 2009 article, “A Brief History of Somatics Practice and Dance,” Martha Eddy wrote: “Dance as a profession can be debilitating. If dance is experienced through classes or performances in an authoritarian and demeaning manner, it can be not only physically injurious but diminishing of the soul. Since the 1970s more and more dance professionals are discovering the usefulness of somatic education in softening these deleterious challenges.”7 I am fortunate to have had several dance professionals influenced by somatics as my teachers and company directors. Having experienced both “well” and “un-­well” approaches to dance, I became convinced of the necessity for deeply integrating somatics into my teaching and choreographic practices. Parallel to my professional dance career in New York, I was immersed in the New Age movement. I explored bodywork techniques including polarity therapy, Trager Mentastics, Therapeutic Touch, neuro-­lymphatic massage, and became certified in Reiki. Psychological and metaphysical interests led me to study creative visualization, past life regression, and body-­mind philosophies. I took classes in Tai Chi and discovered yoga and Pilates as a balance to technical dance training. By the late 1980s, I had started my own private practice in body-­mind techniques to support my dance habit in New York.

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Without realizing it, I was creating my own style of somatic therapy using a variety of modalities to reeducate the neuromuscular system and body-­mind toward greater health and well-­being. I worked with clients creating career and life changes, integrating movement, exploring metaphysics, teaching centering techniques, and practicing therapeutic touch. Creative visualization and Hanna’s theories proved valuable in these sessions, as did my experiences in meditation and bodywork. I designed individual sessions with clients using all the tools at my fingertips. It was an intuitive practice, and I followed the flow of whatever occurred or seemed to work during these sessions. People experienced change and healing. I observed firsthand how people developed postural awareness, realized greater ease of movement, and changed negative thought patterns. I grew to understand that the body is in a constant process of psychophysical transition. This private practice also helped me recover from a serious kitchen burn accident, which interrupted my dance career for months and challenged me to heal myself on all levels, foreshadowing my future work with Eastwest. My next formal somatic training came when I returned to graduate school to pursue my goal to become a college professor, earning my master of fine arts in performance and choreography from Arizona State University. ASU’s dance curriculum included the study of somatics and dance kinesiology with Pamela Matt. Pam taught in the lineage of Barbara Clark, whose ideokinetic theories were influenced by Lulu Sweigard. Sweigard developed her own role in physical education from the work of Mabel Todd. Ten years after my introduction to somatic theories at Temple, dance and somatic theory circled back in my life. My current teaching of dance kinesiology and conditioning and wellness courses has been significantly influenced by Matt’s instruction. In addition to earning my master of fine arts in 1993 and performing with dance companies in Arizona, I completed my massage training there at the Institute for Natural Therapeutics. This added certification credentials to my interest in healing through touch, and I blended massage therapy with my prior studies in bodywork. I also started a massage practice and site-­specific dance company. In retrospect, I can see that creating dances in gorgeous desert settings was, and continues to be, part of my somatic journey. Dance and healing through touch prepared me for Eastwest Somatics practices, which combine moving with nature and bodywork. Some of my most transformational moments have occurred at Eastwest retreats surrounded by nature. As I reflect on the course of my career, I now realize that I was on a trajectory that would eventually intersect the teachings of Sondra Fraleigh and Shin Somatics. Several years into my college teaching career, I attended a dance conference where Sondra gave the keynote address. I was so inspired by her presentation on butoh that I embarked on what has become a life-­changing journey with the Eastwest Somatics Institute. Witnessing her keynote was one of the positive, defining moments of my life.

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My early somatic experiences had richly prepared me for the merging of embodied consciousness with creative dance performance, therapy, and education. Fraleigh’s assimilation of Eastern and Western philosophies intrigued me. Eastwest Somatics studies helped synthesize my background into tangible form, specifically because its unique practices blend so many ideas that were already familiar to me from dance therapy, yoga, and metaphysics. In 2006 I earned my Shin Somatics® certification and then conducted and wrote a case study on healing trauma to complete my credentials as a registered somatic therapist and educator with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. An avid yogi, I am engaged in the practice and teaching of Land to Water Yoga, Fraleigh’s own soma-­yoga system. I recently earned teacher certification with Yoga Alliance and have experienced joyful rewards in offering community and university classes in yoga. I continue my immersion in the east-­west flow of Shin Somatics, participating as student and teacher in workshops and retreats. As an educator I integrate somatic theory in my university teaching, weaving my past into a rich tapestry of organic approaches to dance, bodywork, and aesthetics. These practical classroom applications have led to a series of workshops, master classes, and presentations on somatic topics for national and international conferences. I have come full circle from self-­taught initiate and eager student to enthusiastic practitioner and activist.

Teaching: Somatic Pedagogy Today’s dance world requires dancers to perform a myriad of techniques from ballet to contemporary floor work with advanced technical, creative, and expressive skills. Approaching education somatically assists dancers in reaching their ultimate goal of being able to respond to demanding choreography and to be kinesthetically well-­organized, efficient, and authentically expressive movers. Although my university’s curriculum does not yet include specific somatics courses, I integrate Shin Somatics into my teaching in several ways. I start by viewing students and dancers as whole human beings: as external observable bodies in motion and as internal self-­aware, self-­responsible individuals. This requires a willing, engaged, and present teacher. Second, I assimilate somatic lessons in dance technique, academics, and wellness courses. Shin Somatics pedagogy is based on several key principles. Shin appreciates both the mental, analytical proficiencies and the intuitive, feeling capabilities of participants. Because it is a creative system that values integrative ways of knowing, it is easily incorporated into my pedagogical approach, which is grounded in the Midway Model. This model combines “professional” and “educational” methods of dance education. It focuses on “process and product,” “feelings and skill,” “subjectivity and technique,” and uses “open and closed” teaching methodology.8

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Somatic practices easily merge with this model because I am concerned both with what and how dancers learn. It is important to remember that dancers are not just the physical body, that soma includes the inner perception of the dancer experienced from within. Somatics provides a rich ground for students to learn as whole beings and encourages internally motivated movers and thinkers. This approach enables the dancer to identify with the dance medium. As Martha Eddy states, “When the dancing is approached from a holistic perspective, which involves experiential inquiry inclusive of physical awareness, cognitive reflection, and insights from feelings, the dancing is somatic.”9 As a somatic educator, I teach by example using Shin’s core narratives as philosophical foundations. One of my favorite concepts from Sondra is “Remember to carry the good intentions of your students into your teaching, and you will lift them up.” Living Shin in the classroom means being enough. I am enough. Each student is enough. We start from here. I do not have all the answers; I am willing to “not know.” This is quite a different perspective from many college classes where the teacher is omnipotent and the student is grasshopper. These principles flow into a set of practices that I use daily. I model “becoming empty” and calming the mind at the beginning of class. This goes beyond the old dance adage of “leave it at the door.” I assist students in learning methods of clearing, breathing, and tuning in to the moment at hand. My teacher Pam Matt called this “ready, set, go.” I encourage the development of intuition through imagery and learning through exploration. I love sharing the notion of making energetic progress toward the good. Because I am respectful of individual students and their differences, I receive the respect of my students. Community respect can be nurtured through extending consciousness in the classroom. All of these ideas are key features of the Shin Somatics curriculum.10 Creating whole dancers in preparation for professional careers requires successful practice in rehearsals and on stage. Dancers need solid technique, kinesiological intelligence, improvisation skills, psychological adeptness, and performance aptitude. According to Schupp, many students from competitive dance backgrounds struggle with the transition into college dance programs, especially in understanding what is considered good technique in contemporary dance. They find that the definition of technique expands from executing steps to comprehending how their bodies produce given dance movements. Students need to develop an internal perspective and learn to accurately and dynamically assess their own dancing, which requires more self-­responsibility and a different student-­teacher relationship.11 The somatic-­based educator is well prepared to assist with this transition. This does not diminish the value of technical training, but adds to it. Educators can combine technique and somatic methods guiding students toward becoming self-­knowing dancers, performers, and human beings. Pure mechanical repetition

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of movement can lead to poor habits that inhibit the dancer’s capacity for perceiving and changing movement. All bodies hold stress and respond to physical and psychological stressors in the muscular system, which over time affect the skeletal system. To such stress, the dancer adds the repetition of technical training and the pursuit of athletic and aesthetic excellence required of the art form. Somatics and other movement therapies can develop renewed awareness and control of habitual gaps in the sensory motor system. Many contemporary teachers include the classic Bartenieff Big X sequence, Alexander relaxation practices, and Laban effort shape fundamentals in technique classes. In addition to these processes, Shin’s Six Easy Lessons for Walking on Air are excellent for teaching awareness of body mechanics integral to sound dancing.12 A sampling of somatic pedagogical ideas are interwoven in the following discussions of my teaching of technique, conditioning and wellness, improvisation, and dance kinesiology.

Shin in Dance Technique Class Shin’s inclusive and creative approach to teaching enriches my technique classes. When I teach contemporary technique, I challenge dancers through mental, analytical, and physical combinations while remaining conscious of their intuitive sensing capabilities. Including components of self-­knowing and self-­responsibility in technique class is often a unique approach for beginning students. By intermediate and advanced level courses, students are alive with the potential of learning this way. For example, after students master a difficult phrase, I may ask them to perform it from an internal feeling, or to dance it in silence. I invite them to develop the material by contributing their own phrases or changing their use of time, space, and energy. This opens options in “owning” the material as they shade it with their own preferences. Of course, improvisational skills are important and need to be fostered alongside technique. So, in addition to practicing kinesthetically sound technique, the students have the opportunity to be creative and discover authenticity in performing combinations. Schupp states that “developing a somatic understanding of dance movement is a key learning component in postsecondary education, as well as an important element of postmodern contemporary dance.”13 It is important to gradually incorporate skills for students to self-­assess their own technique. Methods I use include dividing the semester into units of understanding, using tactile feedback, giving mini theoretical lectures, working in partners, and reviewing filmed skills exams. Skills exams are evaluated by both professor and self-­assessed by students using a rubric. This helps them know what “we” are looking for in the class in terms of technical and somatic information. Student self-­assessments become more astute as the semester progresses. Regarding somatic understanding, what follows is a specific, three-­part lesson on alignment through finding length in the spine. Movement imagery and

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touch are key components to help build alignment without gripping, holding, tucking, hyperextending, or stopping the breath. I invite the reader to follow along: 1. Begin by clearing and emptying your being. Breathe and stand quietly, tuning in. Let go of everything but your sense of you in your body. Find neutrality. Close your eyes and listen within. Bring your attention to your alignment. Sense your midline with your bones stacked around it. Feel your anatomy arranged around your center and your feet rooted into the earth. Can you experience your natural postural sway if you close your eyes for a moment? This is the body’s small and constant adjustment to gravity. 2. Next, practice “brushing off” using self-­touch. Brush lightly upward on your sternum, then out along your clavicles, brush up your belly and down your lower back and sacrum. Brush off all areas of tension you are experiencing: legs, arms, shoulders. Move the energy outward and away. Be sure to breathe and listen. 3. Now add this bicycle chain imagery: Imagine a bicycle chain circling your body and running energy down the back and up the front. Around and around, the chain runs smoothly and consistently.

If you are working with a partner, your partner can sweep their hands from your shoulders down your back, and then up the front of your torso. Your partner can also repeat this flow as a “down the back, up the front” touch pattern. Partners do not have to actually touch the body but can use their hands in proximity to help move the body’s energy and awareness. In this exploration, it is important for both partners to breath consciously, inhaling up the front and exhaling down the back. The importance of finding length in the spine is stressed in the work of Pamela Matt and Barbara Clark: “Lengthening the spine should be combined with everything you do in movement—walking, sitting down, getting up, or going up and down the stairs. Down into the roots—up into the sunlight, is the law for all axial bodies. It is the pattern for breath, communication and movement.”14 I often demonstrate such touch patterns on individuals first and draw an imaginary chain on the board. You can use this imagery as tactile feedback through visualization while standing at the barre, in the center of the floor, or lying on the floor. Eventually you can incorporate imagery and touch while moving through space. My students often work in pairs. They can also do this activity for themselves. Next, develop this alignment lesson into How Walking Becomes Dancing. Focus your eyes on the horizon and begin walking around the room. Become aware of your head floating on the occipital condyles. Continue to sense your alignment, and let your eyes scan the room freely. The teacher may gently support with a slight lift under the student’s occiput or give the shoulders the idea

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of gliding with gentle touch on the scapula. As the class begins to move freely in aligned walking through the space, participants may begin to connect to and disconnect from each other’s hands in passing. Connect and release. Keep the current of the walking. This creates a lovely flow around the space and with others. Eventually we are all aligned, connected, and gliding through the space. Locomotor patterns can be added through verbal cues to change direction, speed, and energy. The entire class becomes allied in a walking dance. Trust is built, competition diminishes, and a general sense of well-­being pervades. In terms of Shin’s teaching approach, try not to over-­demonstrate. Allow discovery in the learning process. Let students feel that they are intelligent, creative beings who are bringing themselves to the dance, and, that you, as the teacher, want to see them dancing, not trying to imitate you. I always include a portion of dancing that students perform in a way that is appealing and communicative for them. Dancing from the inside out often occurs within structures where I do not specify how movement is to be done. I am always delighted by these moments in my students’ dancing.

Shin Improvisation Improvisation class is all about cultivating problem-­solving. Sondra calls this “framing potentials” to challenge learning or promote healing through dance and movement. Shin processes that I incorporate directly in improvisation class include core movement processes, flow repatterning, and Contact Unwinding.15 Because improvisation challenges many dancers to discover their own ways of moving vs. copying movement, you are really teaching how to move away from imitation. This can be perplexing for students from rigid studio backgrounds where imitation was prized and improvisational skills were not fostered. Improvisation invites students to enjoy the idea that process can exist with or without product. Classes are approached in a spirit of play and involve improvisational studies followed by observation and response. Finding connection with others occurs both in dancing and through observation. The idea of “holding presence” is a key Shin concept in which a witness provides a safe space for the process of moving. During group work, the teacher functions as part of the circle of learning while knowing their role as a facilitator ready to set boundaries and offer solutions. Included toward the end of my course, Contact Unwinding helps develop skills in supportive and challenging touch, weight sharing, and the use of gravity. It exemplifies trust, communication, and confidence, and is both exciting to watch and delicately transformative. Dance improvisation skills form an essential base for composition and choreography classes. It is in this foundation course that movement begins to have meaning.

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Shin in Conditioning and Wellness and Dance Kinesiology Kinesiological research affirms the need for dance conditioning beyond the standard technique class, and in this field, somatic practice finds its home in higher education. My conditioning and wellness classes are structured around principles of conditioning, cross-­training workouts, and the wellness energy system. Somatics fits perfectly with my holistic approach to this course. I directly incorporate specific somatic lessons, relaxation classes, visualization sessions, and somatic bodywork. The most beneficial time for these lessons is before or after a performance. This is when students are overtired and most injuries potentially occur. I find taking this time to tune in safeguards my dancers. Land to Water Yoga (LTWY) and Shin Somatics integrative bodywork are useful inclusions. Progressing through LTWY’s stages of infant development provides an opportunity for many students to reconnect to body memories. Some of my dancers with attention deficit disorder have found LTWY particularly enjoyable. Students enjoy and benefit from our bodywork lessons working along lines of least resistance with partners. Also useful in kinesiology class explorations, these lessons encourage the body’s relaxation response, improve kinesthetic awareness, reduce stress, and enhance mobility. As Fraleigh insists, our consciousness as humans is rooted in touch: “Movement and feeling belong to each other, and in terms of experience cannot be separated. To bring awareness to movement is an intentional act that invites responsiveness” (original emphasis).16 The feeling of movement, kinesthetic sensation, is vital in teaching dance kinesiology. Students are most successful when classes include practical application through movement. For example, combining experiences of palpating and sensing joint actions of flexion and extension adds kinesthetic perception to viewing diagrams and terminology. Students can readily transfer this information to dance technique class because they understand how the body works. They begin to move from a deeper level of body intelligence. This experiential approach creates informed movers who have the means to understand how to execute skills and perform them expressively.

Conclusions on Teaching with Somatics Somatic approaches inform embodied intelligence. My primary goal as a dance educator is to open connections between external moving anatomy and inner cellular movement, between technique and creativity, and between self and community. I continually ask, “What are dancers learning?” Dancers are learning to express through movement. As Becky Dyer points out, “Exploring imaginative conceptions of ourselves as living, embodied, autonomous, yet connected

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human beings can lead us to more fully discover the creative potentials that lie within each of us.”17 From experience I recognize that feedback is crucial to successful education. Language is an important part of somatic pedagogy. I try to focus on what a dancer is doing well, not on fixing mistakes. I usually suggest rather than demand technical corrections and use phrases such as “bring your attention to,” or “what if you focus on this, now that you’ve learned that”? Sondra calls this “cultivating verbs of permission.” I have also found that it takes time for students to assimilate concepts. I now include pauses between class segments and encourage students to get a drink, rest, and only then come back to the material or transition into the next section of the class. Minded bodies learn best grounded in ease. Remember to support movement with imagery, touch, and breath. Teach consciousness through sensing the flow of movement impulses. In addition to teaching theoretical and technical content, give students an opportunity to participate in processes that create authentic performance. Then this knowing can be transferred easily to rehearsal and the stage. Dancers will bring enhanced kinesthetic awareness, along with their solid training, to the creative process. It is gratifying to see our recent bachelor in fine arts graduates who have taken this somatic pedagogical journey with me move out into the world as dancers and human beings. I believe they will continue to explore conscious ways of being throughout their lives. This has been the gift of somatic information in my life, and I am empowered by seeing it transform others.

Creating: Shin Performance and Choreography One of the most beautiful aspects of Shin Somatics is its usefulness in inspiring meaningful artistic creation. I have created numerous works using Shin’s unique processes of intuitive dance, Contact Unwinding, and meditation in motion. Through these activities I find artistic motivation in body memories and imagery. Despite twenty years as a performer and sustaining multiple injuries from the typical wear and tear experienced by dance educators, I am still dancing. Somatics modalities have allowed me to listen, repattern, heal, and continue to move with grace in the studio and on stage. Shin Somatics enhances the development of imaginative wisdom in performance. There is an ease with which artistic practices and life merge. Once a dancer trusts their inner knowing, they begin to move intuitively. This enables a dancer to become an agent of communication, aware of the entire process of dance itself. This conceptual gestalt changes the dancer’s reality, from musculature and body physiology to a theoretical and visionary process where the brain is performing as the body speaks. When I transform into my creative state, a waterfall of instinctual movement flows out of my body. I become fluid form.

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Fraleigh writes: “Through art (as in therapy), we release independent retention of energy in memories both physical and emotional; whereby, the hidden soma of the body, bereft or smiling is revealed. Artists cultivate trust at the beginning. In their work, they probe the invisible in themselves and develop means for communicating their findings and feelings to others, as from a well they draw to the surface what somatic innovator and international teacher Moshe Feldenkrais called ‘the elusive obvious.’”18 Inspired by workshops and retreats, I have created twelve somatic-­inspired dances and an environmental film. Below I share my process of choreographing “Lucid-­Dream Dances I–III” and “Soul Descending,” which exemplify the power of Shin to transform soma, the body as experienced, into art. The creation of one of my early soma dances, “Lucid,” began with my own re-­embodiment while participating in an Eastwest Somatics workshop, taught by Eastwest graduate and Jungian psychologist, Jeanne Schul. This unique session involved experiences with dream processes. The depth of movement that spontaneously arose from my soma in these dream-­motivated sessions surprised and inspired me. My mind shifted to a present non-­presence. I knew I was dancing but was not controlling the dance. The dream was somehow dancing me. After returning home, I began to reinvestigate dream psychology. This approach, which I call dreaming dances, enabled me to concentrate on the inner performance of the art: to focus on core, heart, and centeredness— the essence of Shin’s meaning as applied to choreography. I decided to create a dream dance for the concert stage with a group of advanced student dancers. We recorded our dreams and used archetypal symbols as the unifying element in the dance. After creating material with the dancers using Shin intuitive and responsive dance, I organized it in an overlapping structure. Just as in real dreaming where symbols transport us from frame to frame in a nonlinear way, we used props, such as cups, gloves, and shoes, which are archetypal dream symbols, to morph into different scenes within the dance. The piece was bizarre, frightening, and humorous at the same time. The use of various pieces of fabric tied the duet and group sections together. The dance was eventually titled “Lucid Dream Dance.” Lucid dreaming became a key choreographic process as the piece developed. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you are aware that you are dreaming. In such a state you can “access the conscious attributes of memory and volition while participating in the events and emotions of the ongoing dream.”19 “Becoming lucid in a dream is likely to increase the extent to which you can deliberately influence the course of events. Once lucid, dreamers usually choose to do something permitted only by the extraordinary freedom of the dream state, such as flying.”20 Naturally, we included flying imagery in our dance. I have been flying in my dreams since childhood. My process of incubation involved seeding my mind with bits of our collective dream archetypal imagery, movement ideas, and music from the piece at bedtime. As I slept and dreamed, the dance would begin to unfold. Because I was lucid, I

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Figure 14. “Lucid Dream Dance.” Catherine Schaeffer (left) with Britanni McDuffie West, Katrina Reid, and Rose Buis. Photograph © 2008 by Marty Lynch.

was able to participate and arrange and rearrange the dance. Immediately upon waking I would record my memories of the dream dance in my journal in order to take them to rehearsal. We created the entire dance from these dream collages. I have used dreaming dances as part of my choreographic process ever since. Another powerful dance made in response to an Eastwest retreat was “Soul Descending.” A transformational experience in metamorphic dance at Green Gulch Zen Mediation Center inspired this dance. I performed this solo in a butoh style, painted and costumed in white. Encouraged by Shin’s experiences with dance in the environment and on camera, I created a film backdrop titled Inmost Sway. As I danced, I became part of the film. Through metamorphic dance processes I transformed breathing meditation into a deep state of heightened consciousness. Sensations summoned moving cellular responses and shifting states of being. I traversed the stage manipulating a symbolic river of burgundy fabric as my soma morphed through distinct phases. I danced to comprehend death, the journey of the soul, and to make sense of loss. Based on my depth experience during each performance, I allowed for optional endings, being led to either descend to the floor or to rise upward into light fading into darkness. The piece premiered in the Dance in the Desert Festival in Las Vegas. By its third incarnation, the work included an actor reciting poetry written by Sondra Fraleigh titled “Molecules of Motion.”21 The poem has a great deal of inherent

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Figure 15. “Soul Descending” dance performed by Catherine Schaeffer in Banks Lake swamp in South Georgia with actor Duke Guthrie. Performed in Georgia as a multimedia solo (Schaeffer) accompanied by spoken word (Guthrie), and original dance film titled Inmost Sway as background. Presented in the 53rd International Choreographer’s Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Photograph © 2010 by Paul Riggs.

motion, and this combined with the film and dance created a complete multimedia experience. It was presented in the 53rd Choreographer’s International Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. During this time, my dear brother-­ in-­law died of cancer. I performed this dance in Scotland while my sister and family buried him in Pennsylvania. The shock of this unexpected loss and level of grief prompted me to contact Sondra in order to find some ground. How does one proceed in such a situation? How will I dance about death during death? Her words of wisdom lifted me: “You will put one foot in front of the other, as you always do.” And I did. In this setting, life, art, and therapy merged. Metamorphic dance allowed my abstract performance an internal opening to grief, where acceptance of fragility touches suffering.

Personal Transformations Although I have had many integrative experiences though Eastwest’s multifaceted somatic approaches, Green Gulch Zen Meditation Center, on the Pacific coast

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north of San Francisco, is one of the most potent transformational sites for me. This particular defining moment exemplifies the philosophy of Shin Somatics, as defined by our director: “When we dance reflectively, we are in a process of becoming more fully conscious—returning what we have forgotten of our intrinsic perfection. Consciousness matters.”22 One day we explored butoh-­influenced metamorphic dance on the deck outside the yurt. I believe the objective was to hold our hands in a receptive position and cross the deck. The questions were, what is the story you always tell about yourself? Can you tell it one last time? Our eyes were closed, and I could sense all facets of nature around me, the air moving lightly. I was crying. I cried fluidly for about half an hour while moving slowly and purposefully, from one side of the deck to the other. I dropped about twelve years of baggage and history in that one session. Through this journey, I understood phenomenology. I realized that far beyond acquiring somatic information as a teacher and body worker, the work was healing me. It was as if my whole forty-­year life in dance, art, bodywork, and metaphysics synergized. I completed and released issues I had been working on for years. At the time, I wrote in my workshop response, “The most poignant part of the retreat experience was the effect on my soma that began with sloughing off dead layers of the self and finished with cleansing tears of re-­birth. I experienced an evolution and integration on a cellular level while learning and participating in movement education techniques.” Embodying movement in its expressive capabilities through metamorphic dance experiences is therapeutic. There is a definite effect on healing the neuromuscular system from psychological and physical trauma. These deep healing transformations parallel what Keleman would call “observed shifts in emotional anatomy.”23 The following passage from my journal (2005) reflects Keleman’s notion of somatic transitions in the process of life change and the value of moving consciously, which lies at the heart of Shin Somatics: Today’s butoh experience I dropped twelve years of pain on the wooden porch today Tears fell like rain from closed eyes Moving across the deck slowly Bare feet on wood Warm Sun, smell of the woods around us, air moving lightly Question What is the story you always tell about yourself? Can you tell it one last time? Forgiveness Path to Freedom

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I love this place of magic in the gulch My community is around me In my core I am peace Sensing love Forgiveness transforms Seeing myself reflected In faces around the circle in the yurt Individual truths linking to greater truth Branches on the Tree Trunk Center Roots Deep in the Earth

I Begin My Day with Shin The oneness of shin grounds my philosophical approach to living as I embody a new understanding of awareness, intention, and centeredness. Shin is alive in my waking, in my stride, in my thought processes, and in developing patience, acceptance, and resilience. It helps me transcend the melodrama of mind and find clarity in stillness and letting go. Overcoming challenges is easier as one comes to have understanding and compassion for oneself. When I wake, I scan my body, holding presence with my soma. I move to standing and into movement consciously. I begin my day with a walk outside connecting to the environment. Weeding tiny patches of my garden helps me collect my thoughts through focus, movement repetition, and simple mindful meditation. Then I write briefly in my journal. Sometimes I open The Four Agreements book and ruminate on its meaning.24 These autotelic experiences ground my day before work. At some time during each day I practice yoga. It may be a short or long session of Land to Water Yoga that gives me options as a yogi and teacher. This deeply reflective process frees my joints, lengthens the breath in my muscles, and assists me in keeping my chakras open and vibrant. In the spirit of Zen, I seek balance and a deep level of engaged consciousness, which allows me to do less to gain more. Through practicing LTW yoga, I access my inner wisdom and continue to heal. In teaching we do not usually get to pay attention to how our movement feels or to consider its affective potential. Soma yoga offers me these self-­educating moments and helps me adjust to change. Since life is change, I am always practicing yoga. Living Shin enriches the core aesthetic, educational, and therapeutic dimensions of my life. The body and mind are one. As we become aware of our creative potential expressed through our lived bodies, a greater whole becomes available to well living. As a professional dancer and educator, somatics has powerfully impacted my personal wellness journey, my training of young dancers, and my

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creation of choreographic works. Living shin affords me the opportunity to change and unwind the soma through moving consciously. Notes 1. Catherine Schaeffer, “Shin Shin Ichi Jo: Body and Mind Are One, Reflections on an Eastwest Somatics Journey,” Somatics: Magazine-­Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences 17, no. 1 (2013): 14–20, 14. 2. Thomas Hanna, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Life Long, 1988), 20. 3. Stanley Keleman, Somatic Reality (Berkeley, Calif.: Center Press, 1979). 4. Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 109. 5. Mary Starks Whitehouse, “Physical Movement and Personality,” Analytical Psychology Club of Los Angeles (1963): 3–8. 6. Roz Carroll, “Authentic Movement: Embodying the Individual and the Collective Psyche,” Thinking Body, accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.thinkbody.co.uk/. 7. Martha Eddy, “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and Its Relationship to Dance,” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 1, no. 1 (2009): 5–27, 23. 8. Jacqueline Smith Autard, The Art of Dance in Education, 2nd ed., (London: A & C Black, 2002), 5–6. 9. Martha Hart Eddy, “Dance and Somatic Inquiry in Studios and Community Dance Programs,” Journal of Dance Science and Somatics Practices 2, no. 4 (2002): 119–27, 119. 10. Sondra Fraleigh and Karen Smith, “Curriculum Model, Shin Somatics® Moving Consciously,” Eastwest Somatics Teaching Manual (St. George, Utah: Eastwest Somatics Institute, 2012). 11. Karen Schupp, “Bridging the Gap, Helping Students from Competitive Dance Training Backgrounds Become Successful Dance Majors,” Journal of Dance Education 10, no. 1 (2010): 25–28, 26. 12. Sondra Fraleigh, “Walking on Air,” Eastwest Somatic Institute, accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.eastwestsomatics.com. 13. Karen Schupp, “Bridging the Gap,” 25. 14. Pamela Matt, A Kinesthetic Legacy: The Life and Works of Barbara Clark (Tempe, Ariz.: CMT Press, 1993), 223. 15. Sondra Fraleigh, “Shin Somatics® Techniques,” Eastwest Somatic Institute, accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.eastwestsomatics.com. 16. Sondra Fraleigh, “Somatics as Philosophy: From Spinoza to Damasio,” Eastwest Somatics Institute, accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/. 17. Becky Dyer, “Theories of Somatic Epistemology: An Inspiration for Somatic Approaches to Teaching Dance and Movement Education,” Somatics: Magazine—Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences 16, no. 1 (2009): 24–39, 38. 18. Sondra Fraleigh, “Soma Strokes and Second Chances,” Exhibition essay for Digital Incarnate: The Body, Identity, and Interactive Media, Columbia College Chicago, February 8–April 2, 2010. 19. Robert L. Van de Castle, Our Dreaming Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 439.

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92 / c atherine a. schaeffer 20. Stephen LaBerge and Lynn Levitan, “Lucid Dreaming FAQ,” Lucidity Institute, accessed June 1, 2013, http://www.lucidity.com/. 21. “Molecules of Motion” in Sondra Fraleigh, Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 147–50. 22. Fraleigh, “Somatics as Philosophy.” 23. Keleman, Somatic Reality, 30. 24. Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (San Rafael, Calif.: Amber-­Allen Publishing, 1997).

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chapter 5

Environments for Self-­Learning Kelly Ferris Lester

This chapter contributes to the definition of somatic pedagogy as a means to ignite self-­learning in students in diverse learning environments, including somatic movement lessons, dance technique, and online dance appreciation. I encountered the somatic movement field through dance, as my undergraduate dance education included brief moments of somatic experiences that spawned my interest in its application to performance. In 2004 I enrolled in a somatics course as part of the master of fine arts curriculum at the College at Brockport (SUNY). This initial encounter and continued studies with Sondra Fraleigh define the majority of my work as dance professor, choreographer, and performer.

What Is Self-­Learning? My dance seems to focus on the horizontal plane with a shoestring theme, I replied. Then I turn, spiraling to the floor and back up again. I put something in my pocket, and jaggedly reference the horizontal plane again. My arm circles in the vertical plane, then swings around, and the gesture of putting something in my pocket returns. My feet reach back with two giant steps as my upper body is pulled forward. I fall and suspend into a space hold of my head, which sinks into a gesture of placing something into my heart. I am traveling with my mentor, Sondra Fraleigh, to the University of Otago in New Zealand to teach. On the last leg of our flight, I turn to her and say, “I was dreaming of dancing.” “Tell me about your dance,” she answers. I recognize

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Figure 16. Kelly Ferris dances “Heaps of Three,” at Hub Dance Collective Summer Concert 2013, choreographed by Rebecca McArthur. Photograph © 2013 by Kelly Dunn.

this as a teaching and a learning moment for both of us. I am enveloped by a deep understanding of this pedagogy of inquiry, but more so, by self-­learning. I acknowledge that by responding to this simple statement I experience the movement of my dream in a more concrete, conscious way. The opportunity to verbally describe and consider my dance transformed it into reality. I dream of dances often, but then those dances disappear from memory. This dance will become part of my choreography as an investment in self-­learning. How do educators support the investment of self-­learning in their students? How does the freedom of choice in learning empower students? How do teachers facilitate a learning process that acknowledges varied interests and talents of students? How can the whole person—thinking, sensing, intuiting, and feeling self—be invited on the journey of a lesson? These questions surface in my consciousness as I evaluate my own teaching methods in dance and somatics. As a dance and somatic movement educator, I realize that the communication of nonverbal content builds through cycles of multiple exchanges with students individually and in community. The next steps incorporate experiences that focus and support self-­learning. But, what is self-­learning? Simply put, it is learning from personal experience. Self-­learning is a multilayered and cyclical process that ebbs and flows in context with specific learning environments. Somatic experiences invite discovery and problem solving, and this self-­awareness and choice invite positive change in movement.

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Somatic practices inherently facilitate self-­learning by placing ownership of learning in students’ hands. Pioneers of somatic practices and body awareness techniques offer cues to support exploration and investigation. Margaret H’Doubler has been quoted as saying that “you are your own textbook, laboratory, and teacher.”1 Sondra Fraleigh offers that “the most important teacher you will ever have is your body.” And “True education is not end-­gaining.”2 Addressing students in a dance technique class, dance professor and pedagogy specialist Bill Evans said, “We are all having the same class, yet we are each having a different class.”3 These aphorisms acknowledge students as individuals who have different learning experiences even when they are in the same room following the same cues of movement and inquiry. A teacher cannot know what a student will take from a class experience or how it will carry through to other life experiences, but she can be supportive of the opportunity for a student to analyze and assimilate an experience from a personal perspective. Somatics, as I often introduce it to students, is an awareness of the body as perceived by the self in this present moment. It hinges on proprioception through sensory motor awareness, internal dialogue, and the patience to abandon oneself to the present moment. One will not have the same sensations in an hour from now, this evening, tomorrow, or even in just a few moments. We are ever-­changing beings, and our self-­awareness oscillates throughout the days and years. As Fraleigh writes in Land to Water Yoga, “Somatic modalities acknowledge pleasure and our need to be released from ingrained habits and limiting beliefs in order to heal. Gentle somatic movement modes encourage renewal through the relaxation response, self-­remembering, and recovery of a more natural, original body.”4 The somatic practitioner guides a student (or group of students) through a process of self-­learning with attention to sensation, reflection, and application. Through analysis of pedagogical theories of Paulo Freire, Bill Evans, Howard Gardner, and John Heron, I suggest that somatics as a field acknowledges the physical, mental, and emotional states as cyclically organic and intertwined in the learning process. My somatic pedagogy is founded in the belief that self-­learning is a key element to meaningful and lasting learning for students. In this pedagogical approach, self-­learning manifests through three main elements: (1) reflection, (2) valuing dialogue and experience over replication, and (3) engaging the whole student or learner. As I discuss in this chapter, these principles are supported by educational philosophers and with examples from practices in diverse learning environments.

Humanizing Pedagogies Educators often refer to the facilitation of self-­learning as a principle of student-­ centered learning. Paulo Freire, pedagogy theorist and philosopher, refers to this approach as humanizing pedagogy or problem-­posing pedagogy. In Pedagogy of

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the Oppressed, he writes that “In a humanizing pedagogy the method ceases to be an instrument by which the teachers can manipulate the students, because it expresses the consciousness of the students themselves.”5 Friere promotes reflection of both the student and the teacher as a necessary component in education. I believe that reflection is a key element in the self-­learning process and one that takes precedence in hands-­on bodywork lessons and group somatic movement experiences. Somatics, as a genre, centers on the individual who is having the experience in the present moment. The experience may be slightly different from practice to practice (and lesson to lesson), but the essence revolves around discovering (or rediscovering) the wisdom of the self. An example from Eastwest Somatics Institute comes from its mission statement: “Eastwest develops healing potentials of movement. It further affirms affective change through educational means so that participants may become more empowered through self-­direction.”6 Whether we call this approach student-­centered learning, body listening, self-­ directed learning, or humanizing pedagogy, the central purpose of the somatic lesson acknowledges the student as her own teacher. However, it is never enough to simply rely on the practice itself to create a self-­learning environment. The facilitator (teacher, practitioner, giver) needs to maintain, support, and acknowledge the centrality of the student voice. I recently taught a Shin Somatics® workshop in Auckland, New Zealand. Before the workshop, I knew the students only through brief email conversations and that many of the students were earning their final level toward certification in Shin Somatics. I structured lessons to provide student teaching opportunities. Upon developing relationships with each student, I re-­strategized approaches to the lessons. Many students scrupulously chose words to express their experiences, and during coloring and drawing experiences, they intertwined written text. With the observation of experiences centering on linguistic intelligence (see next section), I expanded this intention with the insertion of a guiding quote into a memory-­based transformational dance lesson. The chosen quote related to the overall lesson, provided a framework, and ignited individual interpretation for this group of students who connected deeply with language. I witnessed the student’s verbal and nonverbal reflections by tapping into my sense of Freire’s problem-­posing education. Freire contends that “the problem-­posing educator constantly re-­forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students—no longer docile learners—are now critical co-­investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-­considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own.” In a somatic approach, the teacher follows this suggested journey. She listens and follows the predispositions of the student’s movement and nervous system as she advances through the lesson. The structure of the lesson unveils opportunities for internal awareness,

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and as Freire suggests, “reflection—true reflection—leads to action. On the other hand, when the situation calls for action, that action will constitute an authentic praxis only if its consequences become the object of critical reflection.” A possible result of a Shin Somatics lesson is the student’s choice to take the newly discovered internal knowledge into daily life. When self-­awareness is awakened, the student senses how changes lead to less pain, efficient movement, connectivity, stability, mobility of joints, ease in movement, confidence, and so on. As students “attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as permanent re-­creators.”7 The typical lesson plan for a Shin Somatics bodywork session is framed by the check-­in with the student at the beginning and end of a lesson. The frame may be the offering of a question: “what are your perceptions in this moment?” The lesson may be a functional movement pattern, such as twisting to look over the shoulder, or shifting from sitting to standing while both student and teacher observe. Or it might involve tuning in to an image. This frame is essential to the development of the lesson because it provides the student with a reference for the internal observations within this experience. As the lesson continues, the teacher enters the space as a facilitator by gently tuning in to the student’s energy. She connects to the breath of the student by sensing the rhythm and the kinesphere of energy containing both beings. This tactile lesson connects both energetically and concretely through a listening, intentional touch to support learning in a noninvasive way. The facilitator is a tour guide who follows the kinetic pathways carved by the student. The lesson follows the student’s soma in its possibilities of movement and processes of the nervous system with the teacher as a witness. One of my most effective teachers always seemed to take my words and reframe them more clearly so that I could move deeper into the critical thinking process. She waited, she listened, then she asked questions—she was a responsive witness. This exchange allowed space for me to offer thoughts, feelings, inquiries, and more by rejecting judgment and interference. In the last lines of his poem “East Coker,” in Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes, “Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought / So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” Somatic processes often hinge on the idea of waiting for moments of dynamic stillness. I observe that people rarely invite quiet moments and stillness into their daily lives. Attentiveness to waiting yields important integration and assimilation in the nervous system. The teacher notices her own body states and the potential openings for self-­ learning through waiting and intentionality of touch. The facilitator’s whole body consciousness communicates directly to the receiver through the two-­way sense of touch. Irene Dowd, dance anatomy specialist and professor, offers this: “In order to sensitively receive that communication, I need to keep myself in a state of lucid ‘neutrality’: mechanically balanced, emotionally calm, mentally open

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and without urgency to succeed. Otherwise, my own internal activities function as a kind of ‘white noise’ that interferes with my ability to perceive the person I am touching.”8 Witnessing and finding neutrality are often new ventures for somatic teachers and students. Inherently, we want to affirm another’s experience and we seek this in return, but those judgments and external intentions interfere with self-­learning. Somatic lessons in group and one-­on-­one settings encourage students to observe and analyze the self and its relationship to the community. At the completion of a lesson, the student’s inquisitiveness reveals itself from an internal consciousness, rather than the teacher’s presumption of options for the student. As Freire asserts, “the teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”9 Reflection often happens dialogically when students share with other students in the classroom or the teacher. In group classes, the community of students and the exchange among them equally affects the learning as much as the teacher’s influence does. Somatic teachers explore dialogical exchange through touch, reflective questions, and witnessing moments of quiet and dynamic stillness as opportunities for self-­reflection of individuals and the group. In her Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, English professor bell hooks states that “teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-­actualization that promotes their own well-­being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students.” The somatic teacher remains aware of her soma and change in her soma while facilitating lessons. She senses that a lack of personal embodiment will communicate to the student’s body, and thus interrupt the lesson’s fluidity and possibilities. hooks writes, “When the classroom is truly engaged, it is dynamic. It’s fluid. It’s always changing.”10 For the classroom, or lesson, to achieve fluidity and change, the student will be her own teacher, the teacher will be a student, and both teacher and student will invite dialogue. The teacher cannot predict what the student’s bodily expression will be or maybe even what her verbal response will be, but the teacher can support more possibilities for efficiency through touch. A leading philosophical statement for Eastwest Somatics Institute, written by Fraleigh, states that “in becoming more conscious, we learn how to become more fully who we are. In our work, we begin where we are, not seeking anything at first, but learning organically through exploration, growing the self and increasing capacity along the way.”11 Shin Somatics practitioners employ a strategy of matching through touch to amplify patterns—such as walking heavy on the heels, leading with the chin, or shifting hips—that already exist in the student. This technique of matching allows the teacher opportunity to pay attention to the student’s body predispositions and then follow the lead to support movement integration.

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Figure 17 shows matching through touch as a technique for aligning the feet as the base of support for the entire body. Matching through touch serves as an invitation for students to listen to proprioceptive messages. The teacher invites her own sense of non-­judgment by holding presence to allow space for learning, and the intentional touch focuses on the sensations that the student acknowledges in the present moment. Concluding stages of the lesson lead to the student’s sensations of integration, connectivity, or efficiency, often verbally articulated as “smoother,” “lighter,” “grounded,” “easier,” “connected,” “longer.” The student is left with a process of making choices, and that process includes learning how to incorporate recently discovered knowledge into action. Biologically speaking, the teacher and the student listen and follow the cues of the nervous system. Andrea Olsen, an author and a professor of dance, speaks about the somatic nervous system and the automatic nervous system as guides to body listening: “The somatic nervous system receives, interprets, and responds to information related to both our inner functioning and our outer environment. The automatic nervous system is responsible for our internal functioning. . . . Figure 17. At Otago University in New Zealand, Kelly matches the toes through touch and senses how to use this connection in moving the whole foot with a focus on the ankle. She encourages the foot to roll from the inside to the outside borders, and rocks from the toes to the heel. Her touch flows with patterns that spontaneously present themselves. Photograph © 2013 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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The dialogue between the somatic nervous system—which is involved in our interaction with the outer work, and the automatic nervous system—which is concerned with our inner functioning, is fundamental to an integrated experience of the body—body listening.”12 The teacher can tune in to the energy and responses by using her skills of observation and tactile sense. As Dowd writes, “The nervous system can be perceived by my fingers in the way that the wind can be perceived by my eyes: only indirectly. I see the tree branches moving to the south, but not the north wind that blows them in that direction.”13 The teacher does not see the flow of information within the nervous system, but her hands witness the effects in the student’s whole body responses. Then the student synthesizes, assimilates, and reflects on the experience in her self-­learning journey. The teacher as a witness creates an opportunity for the student to connect to the cycle of learning by providing space for reflection and presentation. Verbal exchange is extraneous to this process because by maintaining awareness to the student’s movement, breath, and shared energy a nonverbal dialogue unwinds. Some students relax into the movement and nonverbally request a slower pace, others request an alternate direction with the movement, and others request even more time in this holding place. A conscientious witness hears this and senses the next response. As Isaac Stern, a violinist and conductor, once said, “In music it’s not about the notes, it’s what happens in between the notes.”14 The same is true with finding the answers in personal silence in a somatic experience. Both the student and the teacher acknowledge the silence and connect energetically on a nonverbal level.

Evans Dances with Gardner As a self-­learner and somatic educator, I integrate my pedagogical practices through dance and certifications in Shin Somatics and the Bill Evans Method of Teaching Dance. Somatic teachers guide the process of self-­awareness by facilitating movement lessons based in experimentation rather than replication. The inclusion of dialogue and experience serves the student’s self-­learning process by acknowledging that individual’s sensing, thinking, intuiting, and feeling bring embodied knowing to the surface. Master teachers Bill Evans and Don Halquist demonstrate this somatic pedagogy within the dance classroom through bridges to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and Carl Jung’s four functions of the psyche.15 The dance technique classroom, like most classrooms, encompasses individuals who seek to deepen their understanding of a specific form. A dance technique class is an art-­making process for both the teacher and the student, and creative artists follow different pathways through their processes. I offer here strategies into my own artistic process of teaching dance technique that call forth somatic experiences that have evolved significantly based on my own learning experiences with mentors Evans and Fraleigh.

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The Bill Evans technique connects to principles of Bartenieff Fundamentals and Laban Movement Analysis, to which Evans is heavily indebted. These somatic practices strongly influence my modern dance courses, especially Evans’s philosophy of teaching the whole person through the inclusion of social interactions and critical thinking. Evans values the community of dancers in the classroom and acknowledges how the class community leads to individual understanding of the self. Each student’s relationship to the community affects how the information emerges in individuals as they discover more about the self through others. Evans often connects to the multiple intelligences theory developed by Howard Gardner, which defines eight intelligences: linguistic, logical-­mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist (with occasional reference to a ninth intelligence: existential).16 Teachers who develop lesson plans with experiences to invigorate multiple intelligences reach a wider population in the classroom. On the other side, a student who is cognizant of his primary intelligences can seek ways to more deeply engage in a lesson by attuning to cues and opportunities focused on a specific intelligence. Gardner states “the multiple modes of delivery convey what it means to understand something well. When one has a thorough understanding of a topic, one can typically think of it in several ways, thereby making use of one’s multiple intelligences. Conversely, if one is restricted to a single mode of conceptualization and presentation, one’s own understanding is likely to be tenuous.”17 Don Halquist, a dancer, leader in educational theory, and Evans’s teaching partner, suggests this: “The theory of multiple intelligences also has a strong implication for adult learning and development. Many adults find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences. . . . The theory of multiple intelligences gives adults a whole new way to look at their lives, examining potentials that they left behind in their childhood (such as a love for art or drama) but now have an opportunity to develop through courses, hobbies, or other programs in self-­development.”18 Evans’s and Halquist’s classes offer experiences that interweave the bodily kinesthetic intelligence with intrapersonal, interpersonal, spatial, and musical intelligences. Using Carl Jung’s theory of personality as a basis, Evans and Halquist frame such experiences as opportunities to involve and support the sensing, thinking, intuiting, and feeling selves.19 The sensing self provides information from the six senses, especially proprioception. The thinking self analyzes, organizes, and sequences. The intuiting self facilitates spontaneous decisions, and the feeling self offers personal meaning or significance. Intentional and provocative guiding questions allow students to make links among different components of the class material and the interpersonal intelligence. Evans states that “interaction is central to the class structure. It amplifies the students’ role in the learning process . . . whose technique class is as much

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about self-­discovery as it is about reproducing shapes and rhythms.” Through the reciprocal nature of learning, the teacher follows the experiences and discussion of the students, and the students guide one another through dialogue and observations of partners and/or the classroom community. The developing observation skills and internal listening serve as pathways into embodied dance that can then reveal the inner experience of each student. Evans believes that “students who learn only to reproduce phrases without this kind of reflection and meaning making are less likely to apply the concepts to other techniques, and even less likely to find their own choreographic voices.”20 At Eastwest Somatics we use the term verbs of permission to facilitate the overall somatic experience by focusing on each individual’s process. Verbs of permission, such as invite, explore, play, follow, and experiment, open pathways for individual explorations, rather than designations to complete demands as demonstrated. The student senses what sequence and sensations are needed to embody the suggested movement. Each individual will interpret a phrase like “experiment with light sustained movements” based on present perceptions and discover how to access this quality of movement. The verbs of permission allow a teacher to frame questions that do not necessitate a right or wrong answer, but rather invite reflection and multiple perspectives into dialogue. In a dance technique class, questions framed by verbs of permission are key factors to building self-­awareness, which aids in the retention of movement concepts. An important Shin Somatics pedagogical principle, also present in the Feldenkrais Method®, centers on the matter of demonstration. What happens if the teacher describes the movement, and the students discover their personal path to manifest the dance or movement pattern? A typical dance classroom involves a teacher structuring and demonstrating movement material that is then replicated by the students. Some students may tune in to their bodily kinesthetic intelligence to try the movement with the teacher. Some students may tune in to their spatial intelligence by watching and then trying the movement. Some may tune in to their musical intelligence by listening to the rhythms of the sequence. However, if the movement is described and not shown, each student has the opportunity to discover the movement by simultaneously tuning in to sensing, feeling, thinking, and intuiting selves. (This might also occur through visual information if the teacher can discourage imitation and encourage discovery.) From here, the teacher or other students can demonstrate and build on the initial discovery or approximation of the movement pattern. The insertion of movement description cues, without demonstration, can lead to an exploration of somatic sensing in a dance technique class. Lastly, the idea that somatic experiences happen in a present moment can be tied to performance training in technique class. How can students be fully invested in the present moment and sense the movement with the whole self? Students, particularly college students, tend to let their thinking selves take

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precedence. They strive to do it correctly, whatever it is! This takes away from the ability to sense, feel, and intuit. I have vivid memories of Bill Evans exclaiming, “Dance like it’s the last time you will dance!” The most memorable moment happened in class a week after my mother-­in-­law suddenly passed away. I remember crying through class, but I also remember how it felt to dance that day. Eventually, my memories of those weeks took form in a solo about grief. I channel the energy of my experiences into the performance of this solo as if those days are the present days. Dance is ephemeral, and so is taking a dance class. The somatic question is how can teachers facilitate experiences for students to respond spontaneously to their senses and emotions in a dance class? And how can this nurturing further ignite performance skills?

Experiences in Dance Online A final key element of self-­learning is the engagement of the whole person. Education philosopher John Heron defines a hierarchy of learning that manifests in practical application in the top layer. Heron, founder of the South Pacific Center for Human Inquiry and an innovator in the field of participatory research, defines “Four Ways of Knowing” (which accumulate in a layered effect): experiential, presentational, propositional, and practical. Experiential knowing grounds our experiences and is described as “feeling engaged with what there is, participating, through the perceptual process, in the shared presence of a mutual encounter.” This way of knowing hinges on social interaction. As the second step in our knowing, Heron defines presentational knowing as “shaping what is inchoate into a communicable form, and which are expressed non-­discursively through the visual arts, music, dance and movement, and discursively in poetry, drama and the continuously creative capacity of the human individual to tell stories.” In other words, presentational knowing demonstrates an analysis of experiential knowing through a creative form. Heron asserts the third layer of knowing as propositional knowing, which represents factually based information and what most refer to as knowledge. It is “knowing ‘about’ something in intellectual terms of ideas and theories.”21 The final layer for Heron is practical knowing, or the skillful application of action and practice. Heron offers this theory of knowing and process of learning as a pyramid effect as each layer builds on the previous until reaching the ultimate goal of practical knowing. Does one way of learning (knowing) need to precede another way of learning (knowing)? In somatic experiences, participants often communicate internal awareness and personal understanding through movement, drawings, poetry, music, etc., or Heron’s presentational knowing. Professors Lyle Yorks and Elizabeth Kasl connect Heron’s theory to whole-­person learning in their article “Towards a Theory and Practice for Whole-­Person Learning: Reconceptualizing Experience and the Role of Affect.” They articulate: “Presentational knowing can

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help the learner connect with his or her own experiential knowing by bringing felt experiences into conscious awareness. When learners begin with expressive processes, they often are made aware of emotions that they are bringing to the learning experience. With increased awareness, learners are more able to create congruence between their affective states and their conceptual sense-­ making, thus bringing more authentic participation to propositional knowing and discourse.”22 Thus, in a somatic experience, presentational knowing may precede experiential knowing or even happen simultaneously. A somatic lens of practical knowing relates to functionality in daily movement, and this is where a somatic experience may begin. The practical application of skills, such as moving from sitting in a chair to standing, leads to propositional and experiential knowing through the acknowledgment, discussion, and sensation of anatomical components of this movement. After this investigation, students may creatively express the experience to deepen the learning of the skill. In this example, the learning and knowing follow a cyclical process that continues to revolve with new experiences. I agree that learning surfaces in a multilayered effect, but I disagree with Heron’s pyramid effect. Learning can be cyclical. A clear example of this cycle manifests in an online dance appreciation course that I designed. At times, strides in technology enact limitations of teachers’ abilities to connect with students affectively and personally, but educators cannot ignore the abundance of technology and its influences. Dance Appreciation Online, a course first offered in fall 2010, functions on a semester timeline with weekly assignments and goals. However, as the teacher, I have no control over the order that activities and lectures occur, thus the whole learner creates an individual cycle of learning. Each student sequences the materials to meet the week’s assessed goals. The foundation of this course design emerged from a research inquiry into models of teaching dance appreciation courses in higher education. The initial research centered on how space affects students’ mindsets of learning by delving into three models for teaching this course: a lecture-­only model, a studio-­only model, and a combined lecture-­and-­studio model.23 The conclusion led me to envision an online model that maintained priority on Gardner’s multiple intelligences with specific attention to the bodily kinesthetic intelligence. The course includes lecture and video material, weekly discussion questions, movement experiences, exams, and three papers. While I have written and presented in a variety of conferences on the process of learning online platforms and designing an online course, I shift attention to how somatic pedagogy inherently became part of this course to remain in the scope of the present discussion. Weekly discussion questions and movement experiences prioritize my attention in this course. The weekly discussion questions are often reflective and offer each student an opportunity to analyze course material and consider how to develop a personal aesthetic. All students reply on one discussion board to

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questions I post each week. The movement experience component of the class supplies students with an opportunity to engage with course material on experiential and kinesthetic levels. Each chapter covered in the textbook has a corresponding movement experience. As I began to write these movement experiences, typically based on time, space, energy, and dance genres, I quickly discovered how my years of experience as a somatic practitioner and trainer aided my approach. The challenge surfaced in the writing of the instructions because I needed to provide enough detail for the students to understand the steps or parts of the experience, but leave room for experimentation with the material. The movement experiences incorporate verbs of permission to provide a framework for the students to embody concepts of dance in their own way. The students are placed in groups of five to six, with their own discussion board to reflect on the experiences interpersonally. They may discuss struggles, previous experiences (or lack of), or similarities and differences among the experiences. This yields a connection to social media and encourages the students to connect on a more personal level with others in this classroom. The learning hinges on the community formed as they come to know each other and anticipate hearing each other’s responses. I imagine that they participate in these experiences in a variety of spaces, dorm rooms, kitchens, living rooms, and so on. I hope that the students experiment with the material and connect in the ways that support individual learning styles. For example, I sense that some students read the guidelines one step at a time and then try that step. I think others read all of the instructions and then try it. Yet others may simply envision themselves doing it, but this imagining still leads to active engagement with the material. I am often asked if I require my students to videotape and submit their dancing as a podcast. During the whole design process of this course, I continually asked myself, why do I include this activity or lesson plan in my face-­to-­face course? Using the answer to that question as a guide, I designed (or redesigned) assignments for both settings. In a face-­to-­face model of this course, I do not assess students based on their skill level in dance. Instead, I assess their participation and engagement throughout the semester. Are they open to trying the experiences, and how does this enhance their understanding of course concepts? Thus, in the online setting, I evaluate their reflections, and not their execution of the movements. I assess the effort and sincerity in reflection by scoring the discussion board responses for each movement experience on a scale of 1–4. The movement experiences build on each other in a layering effect throughout the semester and challenge the students. Movement experience 1 focuses on observation skills. I invite the students to observe people to discover the physical gestures people make as they talk. Then, notice your own gestures. Can you put these into a short sequence? Can you consider this as a dance? Movement experience 2 explores elements of space. The guidelines suggest different floor patterns,

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a grid, and a curved or zigzag pathway. Then locomotion is added—skipping, hopping, running, etc.—which leads to an exploration of high, medium, and low levels. Each students creates a short dance in his or her own space (a dorm room, a kitchen, a living room) that is unique to each individual’s interpretation of the instructions. By movement experience 5, the students are learning ballet vocabulary. The beginning of this lesson focuses on posture, but then linguistically describes a plié, tendu, dégagé, rond de jambe, and other ballet steps. The reflections vary as some student may have dance experience and some may not. They support one another in their experiences and often write about the complexity of these movements. Movement experience 8 offers a new mode of learning. This is the only experience that incorporates a video demonstration of the movement. This lesson relates to a chapter on world dance and I chose video links from an ehow.com site. The video includes the teaching of the “Strong Man” dance by an African dancer.24 The point of this offering centers on this reflective question: What was your experience in learning this movement through a demonstration rather than reading the guidelines? This experience facilitates the learning processes as students begin to understand how they learn in relation to movement. My intentions to offer an online course closely mimicked the experiences I offer in a face-­to-­face course. I sense now that somatic pedagogy encompasses all of my teaching. It pervades in both minor and major ways. The somatic design elements of the Dance Appreciation Online course yielded unexpected results. Every week I hear from each of the students in detailed ways about their whole learning experience. The writing skills improve and the engagement deepens with each week. In the end, I am facilitating the learning process through selected course material, feedback to discussion boards and papers, and an offering to experiment with ideas and reflection.

Discovering a Cycle As I considered all of this, I discovered that the theories I present can be interwoven and considered in a cyclical process. Heron believes that learning and the four ways of knowing exist as a pyramid effect. Friere seeks the student as central and the ultimate guide in learning. Evans, with reference to Gardner, attends to the whole person through multiple experiences in a single lesson plan in a dance setting. I see how a bridge of these theories and consciousness of links between them can empower students holistically, connecting experiences of the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical selves. When this happens, somatic experiences illuminate the student in a self-­learning setting. The key elements to self-­learning, as I have defined it, include reflection, valuing dialogue and experience over replication, and engagement of the whole

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student or learner. Freire articulates that problem-­posing learning necessitates active reflection from both teacher and student in order to be present in the process. Somatic experiences honor the self and experience in the moment. Evans and Halquist design lessons that build awareness and embodiment in the thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting selves to invite dialogue and examine experience. Students can attune to a cyclical process of learning, especially when the teacher makes them aware of it. Consider Heron’s four ways of knowing this way: Experiential learning uncovers the affective and imaginal worlds, or the sensing self. Presentational knowing combines imaginal and conceptual experiences, or the intuiting self. The conceptual and practical application of propositional knowing equates to the thinking self. And finally the circle connects practical application with affect to discover the feeling self. Somatic pedagogy invites self-­ learning through a cyclical process that reveals the whole person in the present moment, thus empowering students through active engagement. Somatic experiences and pedagogy can be infused into diverse settings. The challenge is to understand key principles and to practice them, creatively. We each have different lessons to offer, but through suggested techniques and strategies the students can learn from the strata of the soma. This will be a resonating experience and one that will lead to deeper consciousness. If we nurture the whole person, self-­learning will happen and choices will be made from empowered and embodied lives. The work and study that I embarked on with Sondra Fraleigh heavily influence and inspire my approach to teaching dance in higher education and Shin Somatics certification workshops. Upon entering higher education full-­time, I tended to separate cognitively the disciplines that I taught. I tried to define different approaches to each course based on the content. But slowly I discovered what I value most, and then I strategized how to make somatic pedagogy central to all of my courses in creative ways. My awareness of spontaneous somatic moments led to deeper investigations and intuitive implementations. Notes 1. Margaret H’Doubler quoted in Andrea Olsen, with Caryn McHose, Bodystories: An Experiential Guide to Anatomy (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2004), 7. 2. Sondra Fraleigh, Kelly Ferris Lester Workshops Notes, Brockport, N.Y., May 2007. 3. Bill Evans Dance Teaching Intensive, Kelly Ferris Lester Workshop Notes, Fort Worth, Tex., July 2010. 4. Sondra Fraleigh, Land to Water Yoga (New York: iUniverse, 2009), xii. 5. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003), 69. 6. Sondra Fraleigh, “Eastwest Somatics Mission Statement: Definitions, Goals, and Values,” Eastwest Somatics Institute, trainer guidelines, 2012. 7. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 81, 66, 69.

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108 / kelly ferris lester 8. Irene Dowd, Taking Root to Fly (New York: Irene Dowd, 1995), 78. 9. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 77. 10. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (New York: Routledge, 1994), 15, 158. 11. Sondra Fraleigh, “Somatics as Philosophy: From Spinoza to Damasio,” www .eastwestsomatics.com, 2010, accessed February 2, 2015. 12. Olsen, Bodystories, 119. 13. Dowd, Taking Root to Fly, 84. 14. Isaac Stern quotation referenced by Yo-­Yo Ma in an interview for NPR Weekend Edition, September 30, 2008. 15. Based on Lester’s certification in Bill Evans Method of Teaching Dance completed in August 2012 and Shin Somatics certification in June 2007. 16. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 3–4. 17. Ibid., 6. 18. Don Halquist, ”Dancing with Howard Gardner: Teaching Dance to the Whole Person through the Multiple Intelligences,” Bill Evans Pedagogy Certification, Pedagogy Materials, 2003, 4. 19. Bill Evans communication with author, July 2013. 20. Bill Evans quoted in Jenny Dalzell, “Bill Evans: How I Teach Modern Dance,” Dance Teacher Magazine 32, no. 7 (July 2010): 50–54, 50. 21. John Heron and Peter Reason, “Extending Epistemology Within a Co-­Operative Inquiry,” in Handbook of Action Research, 2nd ed., eds. Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury (London: Sage, 2008), 369, 371, 373. 22. Lyle Yorks and Elizabeth Kasl, “Toward a Theory and Practice for Whole-­Person Learning: Reconceptualizing Experience and the Role of Affect,” Adult Education Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2002): 176–92, 187. 23. Kelly Ferris Lester, “Teaching an Online Model of Dance Appreciation,” National Dance Education Organization Conference Proceedings (2011), 116–23. 24. “History of African Dance,” eHow, http://www.ehow.com/, accessed July 25, 2013.

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chapter 6

Trauma in the Theater of the Body Richard Biehl

I was spellbound as I listened to Buddhist teacher Tara Brach tell a story about a man named Jacob. Although in the “midstages” of Alzheimer’s disease, Jacob, a meditator of many years, had agreed to present Buddhist teachings to some meditation students. He arrived at a large hall, and as he was about to address the students, as he had in the past, something abruptly changed in his conscious orientation: “He didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do. He didn’t know where he was or why he was there.” Brach described Jacob’s racing heart and his mind “spinning in confusion.” The audience watched as Jacob brought his hands together in a gesture of prayer and, rather than begin his Dharma talk, he instead started to describe what he was experiencing in that moment: “‘Afraid, embarrassed, confused, feeling like I am falling, powerless, shaking, sense of dying, sinking, lost.’ . . . Rather than pushing away his experience and deepening his agitation, Jacob had the courage and training simply to name what he was aware of, and, most significantly, to bow to his experience.”1 I was profoundly moved as I listened to this story. What was it about this story that moved me so deeply? Was it the experience of another human soul whose expression of distress mirrored mine in times both past and present? Was it the courage expressed through embracing the demons rather than fleeing from them? Was it the embodied presence of those in the audience, many of whom were moved to tears, and whose heartfelt response was reflected in one individual’s statement to Jacob, “No one has ever taught like this. Your presence has been the deepest teaching.”2

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My journey of more than thirty years as a public safety professional with its myriad of tragic events as well as my experience of personal distress—oppressive teachings of religious dogma, abuse by persons in position of authority, cultural isolation in an interracial marriage, personal betrayal, and other affronts to the soul—has convinced me that for many if not all of us, it is not possible to escape significant traumatic events during the span of a lifetime. The very process of birth and the immediate care in the hours, weeks, and months that follow is the first exposure to trauma for many. Whether the intense journey of our birth and subsequent lifetime of postnatal experiences result in unresolved trauma that becomes “fixed” in the body is dependent on many factors: “pretrauma vulnerability, magnitude of the stressor, preparedness for the event, quality of the immediate and short-­term responses, and postevent ‘recovery’ factors.”3 Rather than try to repeat the wealth of publication on this topic, I emphasize here a related theme, “the theater of the body,” where stress, distress, and trauma either have their expression and resolution or become inner demons that appear to victimize without warning, and too often may appear as a lifetime sentence of untold and often unacknowledged suffering.4 Figure 18. In Bryce Canyon, Utah, Richard Biehl strikes Warrior Two from Hatha Yoga. Photograph © 2013 by Angi Graff.

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What follows is an in-­depth discussion based on research and my personal experience of the role of body consciousness in trauma and traumatic illness. Thus this chapter explores various ways to develop conscious embodiment in focused, restorative, and ultimately safe ways through engagement of the wisdom of the natural body and thereby to recover and potentially heal from traumatic stress and illness.

The Demons Come to Visit It is April 1988, and I am returning home after a week away. Home is not a happy place. The overwhelming dread I feel as I approach the doorstep is almost incapacitating. No sooner do I enter the house than those deep, dark energies mysteriously fade away with thoughts of “It really isn’t that bad—things are okay.” In that brief moment, the awareness arises that both states of experience— “dread” and “okayness” within the blink of an eye—appear to be incompatible truths. How can I move from one extreme state to another in the time it takes to walk through a door? As my marriage ends, another relationship begins, and a child is born—all so quickly. These profound transitions trigger emotional remembrances of childhood—constant criticism, physical abuse, the withholding of love, and deeply embedded shame as the response. I realize I do not want to take this anguished mental state with me into my child’s life or into my second marriage. I attend two years of psychological counseling sessions as well as numerous workshops—neo-­ shamanism, insights from a medical intuitive, holotropic breathwork, and healing gatherings—but there is little relief. Constant daily pain, physical and emotional, defines my existence. I can’t envision living another year like this, much less five. Mental confusion, physical distress, and low energy make it impossible for me to sustain effort in any palliative method that does not provide hope for immediate relief. Seeking answers, I frequent bookstores and the local library. I pick up the audiotape series by Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind. I learn of the work of Jon Kabat-­Zinn using mindfulness meditation and gentle yoga to help those with chronic pain and for whom Western medicine cannot provide relief.5 Sometime later I pick up a yoga book. I open it and begin practicing. Something happens. I realize I have a day without pain. I wonder if it is possible to have more. Soon, there is a week without pain, then a month. What is this magic?

Stress, Trauma, and Traumatic Illness We mediate between our inner world and the outer world in a perennial dance through our bodies. When challenging or threatening circumstances are encountered, we can experience stress, distress, and trauma—all physiological

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experiences as well as psycho-­emotional experiences. Stress, defined by Hans Seyle as “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand,” is encountered in everyday life. It can be pleasant (eustress), unpleasant (distress), or traumatic.6 Post-­traumatic stress is distress that persists after a traumatic event.7 It results from a traumatic event that is threatening, wherein the individual experiencing it feels some significant degree of helplessness. Post-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) emerges when those affected by traumatic stress “start organizing their lives around the trauma.”8 There is a continuing debate within the medical and psychological fields on the nature of both stress and traumatic illness. Is post-­traumatic stress disorder a stress, an anxiety or dissociative disorder,9 or is it primarily about biological shock and immobility, a frozen physical state due to confrontation by an overwhelming threat?10 Beyond the debate about the essential nature of stress and traumatic illness, there are divergent perspectives among experts in the field regarding the means of effective treatment, remediation, and healing. Peter Levine, who has studied and treated traumatic illness for more than forty years, describes it as “the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering.”11 He has well described how animals in the wild respond to life-­threatening events and how they physiologically recover from these events—a capacity we share with our animal relatives. What is unique to our human journey is that we often experience “dis-­ease” (e.g., PTSD) as a result of trauma. Somatic disturbance with accelerated heart and breath rate, cold sweating, hypervigilance, and hyperstartle response, as examples, are at the core of PTSD.12 According to Levine, this is due to a disruption of the natural physiological response to trauma (e.g., shaking). While this disease entails emotional and psychological components, it can be healed through conscious embodiment rather than being a permanent “psychological” condition. He declares, “Body sensation, rather than intense emotion, is the key to healing trauma.”13 When confronted with threatening and potentially life-­threatening circumstances, the automatic, involuntary human response is flight, fight, or freeze. This involuntary physiological response is protective. However, if “immobility,” the freezing response, persists after the threatening event or events, trauma results not from the event itself but from “the frozen residue of energy that has not been resolved and discharged.” Its resolution is to arouse “our deep physiological resources and consciously utilize them.”14 As a public safety professional, I am keenly aware of the extremely traumatic events experienced by others through accidents and intentional violence. At the same time, through the experience of personal traumatic events, I am well acquainted with the inner terrain of physical, emotional, and psychological distress that results. I know personally how somatic practice through the yogic tradition can be a path out of the depths of depression and daily pain. Over the past twenty years, I have discovered that physical, emotional, and psychological

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distress is alleviated when conscious movement, illuminated though a “felt sense,” is combined with elongated, rhythmic breath.15 Further, I have learned how practices of moving consciously, when cultivated over time, allow the development of increased capacity to be present with and resolve intense physiological and emotional states, an inherent part of the recovery process.

Breathe, Move, Attend with Mindfulness Somatic practice, whether through the practice of yoga or other mindful disciplines, creates the potential for greater embodied self-­awareness, “the ability to pay attention to ourselves, to feel our sensations, emotions, and movements online, in the present moment, without the mediating influence of judgmental thoughts.”16 For those suffering from traumatic illness, such awareness may be extremely limited, particularly in depressive and dissociated states manifesting as “disconnection from feeling, numbness, withdrawal or hyperactivity” of the body or body segments.17 This disconnection is a failure to relate to the history of trauma and to miss opportunity to successfully resolve it by navigating through its conscious expression. For those enduring acute or chronic physical and emotional distress, psychological interventions that explore cognitive or emotional states, in the absence of somatic engagement, risk escalating or prolonging distress and avoiding potent avenues of healing. What is initially most needed are palliative methods to restore a sense of balance and ease in bodily experience. Employing modalities to mediate physical and related psychological distress reduces the experience of being victimized by unpredictable pain and anguish over which there is often no perceived control. Somatic practices that encourage conscious embodiment within individuals, allowing them to “stay present, feel safe, communicate their experience, and feel empowered,” preferably with support of a skilled guide, are a means to mediate and potentially heal trauma.18 The core elements of such an approach emanating from the yogic tradition are breath regulation combined with slow movement with mindful attention, or—breathe, move, attend.

Breathe In January 2011, I was presiding over a police promotional ceremony. The exodus of many senior members of the police department due to mandatory retirement generated the promotions. After a few brief remarks, I made reference to the biblical verse, “For everything there is a time and season.” Without warning, a deep sadness engulfed me. All I could do was breathe, say a few words, breathe, and say a few words, until I regained balance. Powerful emotions, regardless of their nature, can feel overwhelming. This is particularly true for those suffering from traumatic stress or illness. While

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suppression is often a common defense mechanism, the resolution of painful psycho-­emotional and physiological experiences ultimately requires the courage to show up and stay present with sensation. Internationally acclaimed yoga teacher, Donna Farhi, states, “To become a welcome vessel for breath is to live life without trying to control, grasp, or push away.” She refers to the flexibility of “essential breath—a conscious flow that arises out of the depth of our being and dissolves effortlessly back into our core.” Yoga often utilizes modified and regulated breathing practices to restore this essential breath from disordered, restricted, and unconscious breathing patterns and the disturbing sensations they frequently entail.19 Over the past decade, yoga breathing practices have been utilized across the globe to reduce the effects of traumatic stress and depressive states experienced by victims of natural and human tragedies. Dr. Patricia Garber and Dr. Richard Brown have documented the use of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) and breath water sound (BWS) breathing practices to aid New Yorkers following the terrorist attack of the World Trade Center as well as survivors of the 2004 terrorist train bombing in Madrid, Spain; to assist Russian soldiers with PTSD following their engagement in rescue efforts at the Beslan school terrorist attack that claimed three hundred lives; to assist survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; and to help Hurricane Katrina survivors and other survivors of floods, earthquakes, and war or civil strife in countries around the world.20 A study of the effects of BWS, with or without exposure therapy, for 120 tsunami survivors revealed significant reductions in measures of PTSD and depression as compared to a control group (n=63).21 SKY (and BWS with some variation) utilizes the following breathing practices: (1) Ujjayi pranayama, (2) Om chanting, (3) Bhastrika (Bellows Breath), and (4) Sudarshan Kriya (Rhythmic Breathing Technique). In brief, Ujjayi pranayama involves restricted breath flow and increased airway resistance through a slight contraction of the laryngeal muscles and partial closing of the glottis; utilizing prolonged inspiration and expiration, an audible ocean sound is emitted, with breathing paced at four to six breaths per minute for eight minutes. OM chanting involves vocalization of OM performed three times with prolonged exhalation with a short pause between each chant. Bhastrika entails rapid breathing (20–30 breaths per minute) followed by a brief interval of normal breathing, completed for three cycles of approximately 90 seconds per cycle. Sudarshan Kriya is rhythmic breathing at slow (8–14 respirations per minute), medium (40–50 respirations per minute), and fast (60–100 respirations per minute) rates wherein there are no pauses between inhalation and exhalation. All breathing practices are completed with the eyes and mouth closed and with air exchange through the nose. SKY breathing practices alone or in combination with asanas (postures) and meditation have been found to be effective in reducing anxiety,

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depression, bipolar disorder, post-­traumatic stress disorder, and other stress-­ related medical conditions.22 Although there are many techniques of breath control, a simple breath practice is likely to be most beneficial initially for persons in distress or traumatic reaction. Yoga teacher Mark Whitwell taught such a practice in December 2007 at a workshop in Tucson, Arizona. Ujjayi pranayama was introduced with particular emphasis on the body location where inhalation and exhalation begin and end while linking breath to movement. He instructed students: (1) Inhale from above, exhale from below (inhale into the rib cage first, then into the abdomen, and then reverse the process; exhale through the contraction of the lower abdomen and finally from the rib cage). (2) Experience the body movement as breath movement (movement as support and augmentation of breathing practice). (3) Then use breath (inhalation and exhalation) to begin and end movement. This breath regulation, which also entailed restrictive (ujjayi) breathing, includes pauses at the end of inhalation and exhalation. After attending this workshop I experienced a sense of fierceness, not anger or rage, but unshakable determination. While I had practiced yoga for more than ten years at that time, there was something profoundly different about this practice. I found that this practice in as little as five minutes a day (although Whitwell recommends a minimum of seven minutes) could restore calm and provide increased energy and greater emotional equanimity throughout the day.23 Garber and Brown theorize that the subjective experience of physical and mental calmness with alertness generated by ujjayi breathing results from vagus nerve activation. Such activation triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, the portion of the autonomic nervous system that restores a sense of calm and ease. While traumatic sufferers cannot always predict or control whether the flight/fight/freeze response of the sympathetic nervous system is triggered, balance can be restored through activation of the parasympathetic nervous system through breathing practices. It is postulated that the effects of this breathing method on the parasympathetic nervous system may be due to the combination of slow breathing, laryngeal contraction, inspiration against airway resistance, prolonged expiration against airway resistance, and breath retention.24

Move In a February 2013 blog entry Mark Whitwell comments, “Stress is undeniably linked to mind and body, and there must be a mind and body practice to respond to this illness. We can be grateful for pain, which he (Krishnamacharya) called the unavoidable motive of practice. It is the first sign of a healing process at work. From here we begin yoga and move from pain to pleasure, passion, and peace.”25

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For those suffering from traumatic illness, the recurrent and unpredictable nature of their suffering is both a potential powerful motivator for healing and a barrier to seeking help. Traumatic stress is invariably reflected in somatic complaints, including muscle tension. Physical movement is often needed to alleviate muscle tension, physical discomforts, and related emotional distress. Somatic pioneer Thomas Hanna coined the phrase “sensory motor amnesia” (SMA) to describe states of chronic muscular contraction without sensory awareness. Voluntary control over muscles is dependent on sensory awareness. Hanna sums up the state of SMA: “If you cannot sense it, you cannot move it, and the more you can move it, the more you will sense it.”26 He attributes SMA to three pathological processes—the trauma reflex, the Red Light reflex, and the Green Light reflex (Landau response). Of particular application to stress, distress, and trauma is the protective Red Light (withdrawal) reflex, which involves the curling of the body forward due to contraction of the anterior flexor muscles. This response to threatening situations, if experienced with sufficient frequency or intensity, results in chronic contractions of the shoulders, chest, arms, abdomen, thigh adductors, and other areas of the body.27 David Berceli, founder and CEO of Trauma Recovery Assessment and Prevention Services, poignantly describes this. He and seven other individuals, representing six countries and cultures, all had an identical reaction when during armed conflict in Lebanon, the school building in which they were hiding was struck by many mortar rounds. With each explosion, all occupants were startled, instinctively contracting into the fetal position. Berceli, drawing on his background as a massage therapist and with the assistance of a neurologist, concluded the contraction of the flexor muscles in the anterior of the body combined with the relaxation of the extensor muscles in the posterior of the body generates “flexor withdrawal.” Citing the psoas muscle as a principal flexor causing this withdrawal movement, Berceli asserts that if the contractions of the flexor muscles remain unreleased, the chronic tension “will eventually create additional bodily dysfunction.”28 Berceli devised a series of seven exercises to stress the seven thigh flexor muscles and subsequently to generate shaking throughout the body. These exercises are intended to address general rather than specific tension patterns, and the key to their claimed effectiveness is the shaking evoked from the pelvis, the body’s center of gravity, involving the psoas muscles as well as other hip flexors. The shaking reportedly radiates throughout the body, releasing any deeply held tension patterns. Although rigorous scientific evaluation of this approach to relieve the effects of trauma has not yet been done, anecdotal evidence by Berceli and others points to its effectiveness in helping traumatized persons in cultures and countries around the world.29 Not all movement has the effect of restoring emotional and physical balance much less kinesthetic awareness and mobility of chronically tensed areas

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of the body. In illustration, a 2003 study involving 147 participants evaluated the effects of yoga, Feldenkrais movements, aerobic dance, and swimming on state anxiety, depressive mood, and subjective well-­being. The results indicate that a single session of mindful low-­exertion activities (i.e., yoga and Feldenkrais movements) can enhance mood. Further, the study suggests, “repetitive, low-­ exertion rhythmical movements that are cognitively based may be more powerful in immediate mood enhancement than high intensity rhythmic movements that are not cognitively based.”30 The immediate relief from depression that I experienced in a single session of yoga more than twenty years ago is personal confirmation of this study. Movement, breath, and focused awareness are inherent in most yoga practices, making it difficult to discern the individual effects of each. However, there are studies documenting the therapeutic use of yoga postures (asanas), alone or in combination with other yoga elements, and their impact on stress, psychological disorders, and pain conditions—specifically their effectiveness in reducing physical pain and psychological distress associated with traumatic illness. Increasingly, yoga interventions have been utilized as preventive interventions to avoid traumatic illness. A study in 2004 demonstrated the effectiveness of a mere ten Iyengar sessions (two one-­hour classes for five weeks) to significantly reduce depression and decrease anxiety in young adults (n=13) suffering from mild depression as compared to the control group (n=15). The improvements emerged midway in the sessions and were sustained throughout the remainder of the sessions. The asanas, designed to alleviate depression, consisted of back bends, inversions, standing postures, and relaxation postures emphasizing chest opening.31 In August 2008, massive flooding occurred in the north Indian state of Bihar. A month later, twenty-­two randomly selected survivors, living in temporary camps, were enlisted in a study to evaluate yoga for stress reduction. The yoga program, consisting of one-­hour yoga sessions for seven days, included ten minutes of repetitive movement of all joints (sithilikarana vyayama), twenty minutes of physical postures (asanas), twenty-­five minutes of breathing techniques (pranayamas), followed by five minutes of guided relaxation in corpse pose (shavasana). The eleven yoga participants, as compared to the eleven-­person waiting list control group, experienced a significant decline in self-­rated sadness and did not experience an increase in anxiety.32 A study published in 2012 documents the effect of sensory-­enhanced yoga on soldiers exposed to combat while deployed in Iraq. Seventy soldiers were randomly assigned to either a yoga group (n=35) or a control group (n=35). The yoga groups were required to participate in sensory-­enhanced hatha yoga classes at least twice a week and a minimum of nine sessions over three weeks. The lessons, 75 minutes long and highly structured to integrate methods effective for addressing autonomic nervous system dysfunction, consisted of initial centering

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techniques, breath regulation (pranayama), postures (asanas), meditation, and relaxation (shavasana). Taught by a certified yoga teacher, the session elements utilized deep-­touch pressure, slow rhythmic motion with synchronized breath, and a specific series of postures (Yoga Warrior lesson plan) to balance the nervous system. The yoga treatment group experienced significant reduction in state and trait anxiety and greater improvement in most Quality of Life Survey variables measuring feeling states, vigilance, loneliness, socialization, and so on.33 Ample evidence supports the effectiveness of well-­designed conscious movement practices to heal a myriad of health conditions including adverse psychophysiological states, whether acute or chronic. Nonetheless, gentleness in these practices is encouraged, as Pat Ogden, a sensorimotor psychotherapist, has opined: “There is nothing more detrimental to building somatic resources than making the process of re-­connecting with the body an effortful, painful, negative experience.”34 Experts in somatic interventions make consistent points regarding key elements of effective intervention. The environment must be safe. The physical movements should be structured but still allow individuals choice in the degree of intensity and in whether to participate in any portion of the practice. It is best to have support of someone knowledgeable in the method being employed. Movement practices that work most effectively are performed slowly, rhythmically, and consciously. Having the support of a community of similarly directed individuals facilitates healing. Figure 19. Amy Bush slows her attention consciously, observing grains of sand in “Dune,” an environmental butoh and depth-­movement exploration. Dance mapped and photographed in Snow Canyon, Utah, by Sondra Fraleigh. Photograph © 2011 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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Attend It may appear that the most direct path to experiencing a felt sense of the body is to become still and pay attention to what arises. For those who are not navigating the landscape of trauma, this may be an appropriate place to begin. But for trauma sufferers, this simple approach may be too daunting. Bessell van der Kolk, a pioneer in the neuroscience of trauma, recounts: “Traumatized people are often terrified of the sensations of their own body.” He further elaborates: “If you are traumatized, being in silence is often terrifying. Memory of trauma is stored, so when you are stilled, the demons come out. Those with PTSD should first learn to regulate their physiology with breath, postures and relaxation, and work toward meditation.”35 When in the throes of depression years ago, I was overwhelmed with feeling states, emotional states, nightmares, and frightening thoughts. The inner psychic and physical terrain was anguishing and well beyond anything familiar, much less safe. While I sought to understand my experiences, I was in a foreign land. I needed to come home to something familiar, something known. Since I was a former martial artist and powerlifter, the physical body was a familiar place. I came home to the body first through movement, then through breath, and finally through awareness—increasing the ability to remain present with the experience of the unfolding moment, no matter how difficult. Many stress management educators and trauma treatment professionals recognize the need for somatic approaches to restore a feeling of safety, balance, and well-­being in the body. Much of the foregoing discussion has focused on yoga as one method with ancient roots. But the essence of yoga cannot be embraced without attending to breath and body with conscious awareness. The audible sound of ujjayi pranayama is one of many elements of yoga to cultivate mindfulness. The minute there is a recognition that the breath no longer is flowing with sound is an indication that the mind has wandered. Yoga poses, particularly balancing poses, cannot be held without attention to breath, a visual focal point (drishti), and awareness of the contraction and relaxation of muscles required to embody a pose. All of yoga practice in its mature form cultivates mindfulness and conscious embodiment. Once balance is restored in body and emotions, a primary focus for those recovering from trauma and traumatic illness, a more sedentary practice of mindfulness may be helpful. For some, however, beginning with awareness may be a point of entry. This process further leads to the awareness of the internal and external sensations of the body—the very experience of being alive. This felt sense when combined with increased awareness is an integral part of the path to healing. To accomplish this, often a body scan process is used wherein conscious attention is progressively brought to all parts of the body as an effective process

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of awakening body-­centered consciousness. Depending on a person’s tolerance for such experience, this process can last a few minutes to more than half an hour. It can lead to the development of acute awareness of the body, both superficially and deeply, and ultimately to the courage to be present with what is found. The key is to slowly create progressive awareness of bodily sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant. A more evolved form of body-­centered mindfulness practice is iRest, or Integrative Restoration, which is based on the ancient practice of Yoga Nidra. Synthesized for therapeutic application by yogic scholar and clinical psychologist Richard Miller, the practice incorporates ten elements. It begins with connecting with heartfelt presence, setting intention, and identifying an inner resource to facilitate a sense of peace and calm. Thereafter, sensing is directed toward the body, breath, feelings or emotions, and thoughts. This sensing is accompanied with an attitude of welcoming regardless of the experience. The practice ends with opening to the experience of joy and well-­being in the body, then noticing the felt sense of I-­ness as well as witness consciousness. The final step is integrating the sense of oneness and well-being and carrying the state into everyday life.36 A 2011 study documents the application of iRest to U.S. military veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Eleven veterans—ten Vietnam War veterans and one Iraq War veteran—participated in weekly two-­hour sessions for eight weeks. The sessions included progressive instruction in the elements of iRest, a forty-­minute guided iRest session, followed by distribution of CDs of each practice session for home study. Information gathered through anonymous questionnaires and in-­class discussions throughout the eight-­week study revealed that participants were able “to regain a measure of subjective control over their experience, achieve symptom relief, regain feelings of self-­efficacy, and experience positive states that had been occluded by PTSD symptoms.”37 Notwithstanding the positive outcomes reported by the study participants, what is also instructive are the elements of iRest reported to be most helpful to them. The most frequently cited element was body sensing (74 percent), followed by awareness (60 percent), and then exploring strengths and inner bliss (57 percent). The element least cited was exploring beliefs (26 percent).38 Given the significant somatic distress often associated with traumatic illness, it is understandable that the three elements most cited by participants as beneficial are ways of befriending the body. The researcher asserts that the “greatest relief from tonic states of anxiety, hypervigilence, and rage may come most easily through therapies that cultivate and sustain opposite states of mind.”39 Simply put, cultivating what feels soothing, pleasurable, and joyful rather than fixing what is wrong is often untilled fertile ground on the path to healing.

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Figure 20. Angi Graff in “Dune” in Snow Canyon, Utah. Photograph © 2011 by Sondra Fraleigh.

Journey and the Destination If healing traumatic illness were not possible, the perceived experience of unpredictable, uncontrollable, recurrent pain and distress would be potentially unbearable. Thankfully, there are simple somatic methods that can provide immediate relief to experiences of distress, both acute and chronic. Attending to breath and movement with mindfulness is core to these methods. Courage and perseverance is required. Every moment, particularly those that are difficult, provides opportunity to heal. Cultivating the ability to move from pain “to pleasure, passion and peace” is to follow a path to the vastness of the possibilities of life—to potentially find one’s bliss. As Joseph Campbell has said, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”40 Notes 1. Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (New York: Bantam Dell, 2003), 73–74.

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122 / richard biehl 2. Ibid., 75. 3. Arieh Y. Shalev, “Stress versus Traumatic Stress: From Acute Homeostatic Reactions to Chronic Psychopathology,” in Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, ed. Bessell A. van der Kolk, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, 77–101 (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 79. 4. I borrow this term from Peter A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1997), 188. 5. Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 115–43. 6. Hans Sayle, “Forty Years of Stress Research: Principal Remaining Problems and Misconceptions,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 115, no. 1 (1976): 53–56. 7. Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 7. 8. Bessell A. van der Kolk and Alexander C. McFarlane, “The Black Hole of Trauma,” in van der Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisaeth, Traumatic Stress, 3–23, 6. 9. Elizabeth A. Brett, “The Classification of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” in van der Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisaeth, Traumatic Stress, 117–26. 10. Peter Levine, Healing Trauma: Restoring the Wisdom of the Body (Boulder, Colo.: Sounds True, 1999), audiocassette, 6 cassettes, tape 1. 11. Ibid. 12. Rothschild, Body Remembers, 7. 13. Levine, Waking the Tiger, 12. 14. Ibid., 16–19, 31. 15. The experience of the complex array of ever-­changing stimulation of external senses and internal sensations of the living body interacting with its environment. For a more detailed explanation of felt sense and its role in healing trauma, see Levine, “Trauma’s Reflection,” in Waking the Tiger, 65–83. 16. Alan Fogel, Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-­Awareness (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 1. 17. David Hartman and Diane Zimberoff, “Healing the Body-­Mind in Heart-­Centered Therapies,” Journal of Heart-­Centered Therapies 9, no. 2 (2006): 75–137, 104. 18. Ibid., 119. 19. Donna Farhi, The Breathing Book: Good Health and Vitality through Essential Breath Work (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), 5–9. 20. Richard P. Brown and Patricia L. Gerbarg, “Yoga: A Breath of Relief for Hurricane Katrina Refugees,” Current Psychiatry 4, no. 19 (2005): 55–67. 21. Teresa Descilo et al., “Effects of a Yoga Breath Intervention Alone and in Combination with an Exposure Therapy for Post-­Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Survivors of the 2004 South-­East Asia Tsunami,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 121, no. 4 (2010): 289–300, 295. 22. Richard P. Brown and Patricia L. Gerbarg, “Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress Anxiety and Depression: Part I—Neurophysiologic Model,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 11, no. 1 (2005): 189–201. See also Richard P. Brown and Patricia L. Gerbarg, “Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress Anxiety and Depression: Part II—Clinical Applications and Guidelines,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 11, no. 4 (2005): 711–17. See also Martin A Katzman et al., “A Multicomponent Yoga-­Based, Breath Intervention Program as an

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6. tr auma in the the ater of the body / 123 Adjunctive Treatment in Patients Suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder with or without Comorbidities,” International Journal of Yoga 5, no. 1 (2012): 57–65. 23. Mark Whitwell, The Promise of Love, Sex and Intimacy (New York: Atria Books, 2012), 11–12. 24. Brown and Gerbarg, “Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing: Part I—Neurophysiologic Model,” 191–93. 25. Mark Whitwell, “Peace for Our Soldiers at Home and Away,” Heart of Yoga Blog, February 20, 2013, http://heartofyoga.wordpress.com, accessed February 7, 2015. 26. Thomas Hanna, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health (Cambridge, Mass.: De Capo Life Long, 1988), 25–26. 27. Ibid., 65–69. 28. David Berceli, The Revolutionary: Transcend Your Toughest Times (Vancouver: Namaste, 2008), 38–40. 29. Ibid., 137–42. 30. Yael Netz and Ronnie Lidor, “Mood Alterations in Mindful Versus Aerobic Exercise Modes,” Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied 137, no. 5 (2003): 405–19. 31. Alison Woolery et al., “A Yoga Intervention for Young Adults with Elevated Symptoms of Depression,” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 10, no. 2 (2004): 60–63. 32. Shirley Telles et al., “Post Traumatic Stress Symptoms and Heart Rate Variability in Bihar Flood Survivors Following Yoga: A Randomized Controlled Study,” BMC Psychiatry 10, no. 1 (2010): 1–10. 33. Carolyn C. Stoller et al., “Effects of Sensory-­Enhance Yoga on Symptoms of Combat Stress in Deployed Military Personnel,” American Journal of Occupational Therapy 66, no. 1 (2012): 59–68. 34. Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, and Clare Pain, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 212. 35. Integral Yoga Magazine, “Yoga and Post-­Traumatic Stress Disorder: An Interview with Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.,” Integral Yoga Magazine (summer 2009): 12–13. 36. Katherine Griffin, “Reflections of Peace,” Yoga Journal, November 2011, 84–98. 37. Lisa Stankovic, “Transforming Trauma: A Qualitative Feasibility Study of Integrative Restoration (iRest) Yoga Nidra on Combat-­Related Post-­Traumatic Stress Disorder, International Journal of Yoga Therapy 21, no. 1 (2011): 23–37. 38. Ibid., 33. 39. Ibid., 34. 40. Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), 113.

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chapter 7

Radical Somatics Hillel Braude

Introduction: Somatics as a Radical Practice Somatics is a radical practice. It is radical in transforming set norms or habits in the body of individuals, and thereby it has the largely untapped potential to transform the social body politic. The positive transformative power of somatics contrasts with the great twentieth-­century political movements of communism and fascism, whose numbing ideologies inflicted grave terror on countless individuals. Don Hanlon Johnson has written articulately about how the “simplicity of perception” and “modesty of goal” espoused by leading somatic pioneers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Moshe Feldenkrais, Elsa Gindler, and Charlotte Selver, stand against the mass manipulation of humanity “in the name of exalted moral and religious ideals.”1 My understanding of somatics as a medium of transformation derives from my backgrounds in medicine, philosophy, and the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education. The work of Richard Zaner in medicine and phenomenology has also been influential, as I take up in my article on Zaner.2 My current research integrates approaches to medicine and somatics in the emergent field of neuroethics—I am particularly interested in the relation between somatics, phenomenology, and the study of the brain (neuroscience). In this chapter I seek to understand how concrete work in somatics may inform these other more abstract, though not necessarily more analytical, disciplines. To this effect, I analyze the transformative qualities of somatics in terms of

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neurobiology and phenomenology, and consider how somatics provides a sensible bridge between the study of subjectivity and the naturalistic sciences.3 In particular, I discuss the radical idea adapted from the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-­Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas that somatics directly affects the precognitive sensibility of the Other. Somatics is not just about self-­ transformation, whether cognitive or precognitive, but is intrinsically self-­to-­ other directed in its transformational methodologies and practices. The radical transformative power of somatics derives from a practitioner’s ability to touch the deep recesses of precognitive cellular states of being—hyletic data emerging from the embodied self. These hyletic data may include sensations, affect, kinesthesia, perception, and any other sensuous data about the self, emerging at the margins of consciousness and brought to conscious attention through phenomenological reflection or introspection.4 Maurice Merleau-­ Ponty has noted that our fundamental historicity is tied to the “sedimentation of perception in our bodies.”5 Conversely, the unpacking of this sedimentation through somatics is tied to the loosening of these historical forms of meaning bestowal, or institutionality.6 The Shin Somatic term Contact Unwinding, used to describe the partnering process of alternately supporting weight and being guided and carried in movement or dance, implicitly acknowledges the unraveling and reinscribing of new forms of meaning on the lived body.7 Another somatics technique, Authentic Movement, which involves the witnessing of another person moving, highlights the dance of intersubjectivity that accompanies most, if not all, somatics activities.8 (The possibility of moving beyond one’s own self-­limits, the paradox of becoming more oneself at the moment of self-­emptying or self-­ transcendence, may also occur privately through dancing authentically in the absence of an external witness.) The focus on process rather than outcome in somatics strengthens an individual’s core self through allowing different layers of self to emerge from its precognitive depths.

Somatics, Phenomenology, and the Naturalistic Sciences Sondra Fraleigh describes in this book how somatics operates at the level of embodied reflexivity and is, therefore, best understood philosophically in terms of phenomenology—concerned as it is with consciousness and intentionality.9 Fraleigh notes that “somatic movement practices might even be called phenomenology in action.”10 Especially in his later work, the founder of the twentieth-­century movement of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, was increasingly concerned with investigating kinesthesia, that is, self-­awareness through the sensations of movement. Husserl distinguished between “kinesthesia of the I”—the awareness of the way in which we will the movements of our body, and “organ kinesthesia”—the

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awareness of the sensory contact or our skin or other limbs with any external object.11 The two forms of kinesthesia identified by Husserl crystallize the tension between more conscious acts of willing and more passive forms of perception. This tension also animates the conception of somatics as a form of analytic understanding of the lived body, or as means of contacting fleshly sensibility. Fleshing out this relation in terms of explicit analytic understanding and pre-­ reflective experience animates my concerns in this chapter. Phenomenology makes sense of somatics, yet somatics arguably also provides the sensible foundation for phenomenology. What is the relation between somatics and phenomenology? How are these two human disciplines to be differentiated? In her fine essay, “Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-­Ponty,” Bertina Bergo notes that for Husserl the simplest affective states are always intentional.12 Yet the corollary is also true: intentionality is always affective! Phenomenology is a study of essences presented through intuition—an eidetic science. As Husserl writes in Ideas: “The seizing upon and intuition of essences is, however, a complex act, specifically seeing essences is an originary presentive act and, as a presentive act, is the analogue of sensuous perceiving and not of imagining” (emphasis added).13 Sensuous perceiving is always the analogue of intuitive presencing, even in the absence of direct object perception, for example in the instance of hallucinations. Phenomenology would be unthinkable without the prior presence of soma—defined in this book in successive layers, most broadly as “the body perceived by the self,” or the “experience of body, self, and otherness.”14 Hence, Merleau-­Ponty and Levinas respectively develop the idea that sensibility or sensuous life exists before becoming an object of intentional consciousness. This insight is important in differentiating somatics from phenomenology. Somatics and phenomenology may be contemporaneous in the sense that both focus on intentionality, the former using the methodology of touch and movement, the latter in terms of conscious reflection and introspection. However, soma—the stuff of somatics—precedes conscious reflection. This point is important because the intellectual act of grasping that constitutes phenomenology brushes against the borders of the unconscious and what is unknowable, for example, in phenomenology’s emphasis on pre-­reflective cognition; yet phenomenological grasping remains firmly on the side of illuminated understanding. In contrast, in making contact with sensuous life, somatics practitioners are often content to stay with a situation of unknowing, allowing themselves to “merely” be in the presence of another’s soma without judgment, with all the associated mystery and potentiality. (Of course, somatics practitioners may articulate explicit analytic insights toward somatic experience. However, these explicit processes are already one step removed from the original somatic experience—and in this way are already “phenomenological.”) Using a term taken from Merleau-­Ponty, one can say that somatics is a “chiasmatic” practice, revealing the site of union

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between body and self, in linking explicit and pre-­reflective cognitive dimensions, but also in terms of acknowledging the presence of loci that may never attain our conscious awareness.15 Rather than seeking understanding, somatics in this sense is concerned with intersubjective categories of the flesh, such as witnessing, and alleviation of suffering. In adhering to this level of the soma, somatics is foundational for phenomenology and provides the key to radical transformation. In order to understand better the subtle relation between somatics and phenomenonology as disciplines of subjectivity, it is also helpful to relate them to the natural sciences. Through positing phenomenology as an eidetic science, Husserl intended to ground the naturalistic and human sciences on firm philosophical foundations. Somatics as a science of the lived moving body can also be informed by “neighboring” naturalistic disciplines, just a few of which are intuitive dance, experiential anatomy, humanistic psychology, neurobiology, and affective neuroscience. Yet, information from somatics practice provides another valuable medium for exploring consciousness and cognition as embodied phenomena that resists complete reduction into its naturalistic components. For example, watching a baby with a neurodevelopmental delay or sensorimotor impairment “magically” respond to informed touch and guided movement by a skilled somatics practitioner cannot be explained simply in terms of linear notions of causality in neuroscience. Exploring parallel concepts in somatics, phenomenology, and neuroscience provides the obvious place to mine the connections between them. Logically, one should find correlations between the study of consciousness (phenomenology) and the brain (neuroscience).16 For example, Kurt Goldstein’s use of “foreground” and “background” structures to explain neurological phenomena such as reflexes and cerebellar ataxia may be constructively compared with the difference between explicit and pre-­reflective understanding in phenomenology.17 A recent theory in affective neuroscience posits a theory of circular causal loops between evolutionarily distinct regions of the brain to explain different kinds of “MindBrain” function.18 According to this model, cognitive executive functions occur primarily in the neocortex, secondary-­process affective memories are primarily mediated via the basal ganglia, while basic primordial affective states are subcortical. A complex intersubjective phenomenon, such as empathy, arises through a combination of top-­down and bottom-­up processes involving cognitive and affective states.19 Marie Vandekerckhove and Jaak Panksepp contrast higher forms of cortical noetic knowing with rudimentary states of autonomic awareness, or anoetic consciousness, derived from lower subcortical regions.20 These terms might equally apply to the relation between conscious reflection and the largely unconscious haptic data present in the mind-­body of a somatics practitioner. However, as with phenomenological concepts, these neuroscience terms refer

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to metaphoric concepts that are already one step removed from their underlying somatic realities. Somatics can and should be scientifically investigated through third-­person neuroscience techniques in order to delimit the naturalistic bases of somatics, and at the same time to determine the boundaries of knowledge that is essentially pre-­reflective.

Kinesthesia I wish to put forward the idea that somatics, and especially kinesthesia, provide an important means to bridge the distinct realms of phenomenology and neuroscience. Neurologist A. R. Luria describes the temporal flow of neuronal activity in terms of “kinaesthetic afference” and “kinaesthetic/kinetic melodies.”21 Following on from this, Maxine Sheets Johnstone observes that the creation and constitution of kinesthetic melodies through movement are phenomenologically concurrent. In other words, “the melody is kinaesthetically felt and has an affective-­cognitive aura generated in and by the very movement that produces it, at the same time that the very movement that produces it is kinaesthetically and affectively-­cognitively constituted as an ongoing qualitative kinetic dynamic.”22 What this means is that neuronal events and phenomenological categories are constituted through kinesthesia. Phenomenology rests on this somatic foundation, even while it presents the conceptual and methodological apparatus to reflect on the meaning of movement’s temporal-­spatial dynamics. Taking this analogy further, neuroscientist Jean Luc Petit argues that some brain events or neural patterns exhibit “neural signatures of intentions” that are typical kinesthesia. In other words, the electrical movement of single neurons and brain regions themselves express a form of kinesthesia that can be said to be intentional in their underlying association with movement and action. Furthermore, the same neurological acts “by exerting some measure of feedback, top-­down, frontoparietal control over the whole functional dynamics of brain machinery, recategorize it as kinesthetic.”23 Kinesthesia provides at once a model for neural functional connections and a key phenomenological concept of embodied self-­ awareness. This means, therefore, that self-­awareness is always embodied and can be approached simultaneously using the two methodologies of phenomenology and neuroscience, with kinesthesia acting as the bridge between the two. I wish to extend this concept of kinesthesia to include the self-­other relation that is integral to somatics. Two post-­Husserlian phenomenologists, Maurice Merleau-­Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, have articulated from divergent perspectives the idea that our flesh is at once both an inside and an outside structure.24 Our cellular membranes establish the possibility of isolated selves, but also the possibility of connection, of relationship. The same applies to kinesthesia. Kinesthesia, whether it is in the form of neural signatures or in a somatic-­inspired dance, establishes the presence of the self in the world, but always in relation to

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an external structure. This could take the form of the hard surface of the wooden floor, reflecting the force of gravity against the spine, or the back of another dancer. Thus, kinesthesia may also involve the connection between two or more somatic selves—a tapestry of somas. At a neural level, the feedback loops between higher and lower levels of cortical control can now extend beyond the brain of a single self to include the embodied “MindBrains” or neural selves of others. Yet, the somatics perspective that I am articulating here seeks to ground this empathic experience of another broadly and deeply in terms of a full sense of mindful-­embodiment and intersubjectivity. In summary, this analysis of kinesthesia intimates how somatics interaction offers a means of personal and interpersonal transformation through directly affecting the precognitive sensibility of an­other.

Somatics Affecting and Empathy I call this transformation of the Other “somatics affecting.” What are some of the key elements of somatics affecting? In answering this question, I focus on a theme lying at the heart of somatics practice: empathy, the ability to feel and understand another person’s affective state and emotional situation. Empathy is a key concept in linking the three strands of somatics, phenomenology, and neuroscience. Most importantly, while my analysis in this final section draws largely on recent synthesizing work in social neuroscience, an emergent discipline that has added an important perspective to the previous psychological and philosophical conceptions of empathy, I relate this analysis of empathy to concepts in Shin Somatics® and in the Feldenkrais Method®. Philip Jackson and Jean Decety have distinguished three dynamic functional components of empathy: affective sharing; self-­other awareness that relies on the cognitive capacity to take the perspective of the other person; and regulatory mechanisms that keep track of the origins of self and other feelings.25 According to this neuro-­evolutionary perspective, empathy is affective, in the sense of being a cognitive understanding arising on the basis of a prior experiential base of affective resonance or “emotional contagion” whereby one assumes the same or similar emotional feeling of another with whom one is in contact. Additionally, empathy is also an affective response that arises from a cognitive appraisal of emotional contagion. In other words, the causal mechanisms of the feeling of empathy can be both cognitive and affective. There is, therefore, a feedback loop occurring in empathy between parts of the brain associated with affect and cognition. Parts of the brain used in the generation of empathy include the cortex (insula, anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex), midbrain (e.g., periaqueductal grey), and brainstem.26 This feedback loop is important in the process of affective regulation that may occur through higher cortical control inhibition of bottom-­up processing of negative arousal, for example arising from

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the perception of painful stimuli.27 There are two important points to add to this picture. First, data from neuroscience, especially data proving the existence of mirror neurons,28 present tangible material suggesting the importance of mechanisms of neural mimicry and isomorphism,29 even if by itself the theory of mirror neurons is not sufficient to provide the foundation for a theory of the complex phenomenon of empathy. Second, the distinction between self and Other that originated in the phenomenological literature on empathy is continued in the social neuroscience perspective.30 Thus, awareness of another’s affective state simultaneously reinforces one’s own sense of self. How does this literature on empathy impact on “somatics affecting”? Through being present with or touching the affective state of another, somatics affecting might, in fact, be considered synonymous with empathy, a form of empathy in the flesh. However, empathy is both an affective and cognitive state. Somatics affecting brings the whole self into presence with another, and is not defined simply in terms of cognition. Additionally, somatics affecting implies a transformation in the Other’s precognitive self—a condition that is not a condition of empathy. Somatics touch, like empathy, dissolves and reaffirms the barriers between Self and Other. Through neural mirroring the practitioner’s nervous system becomes one with the Other. This neural mirroring can partially be explained in terms of conscious mirroring of another’s movement, as well as in terms of unconscious firing of mirror neurons and direct. Additionally, the practitioner’s calming down or inhibiting her own nervous system will allow her to become more perceptive to the subtle kinesthetic changes of another. Sondra Fraleigh describes this in terms of matching. Matching the movements of others allows the somatic practitioner to “self-­attune and join the movement of others before offering guidance or introducing options in movement.”31 Besides affective tuning, the purpose of matching is also to provide an attentional mirror back to the self. Simply to remain immersed in the oceanic feelings associated with sensibility of the soma would limit somatics to egological narcissism. Instead, the relation between Self and Other becomes affirmed through deep connection, as well as respect. The therapeutic power of somatics lies in its potential to open wellsprings of self-­healing, and not to provide a form of external manipulation. The Feldenkrais Method provides one somatics modality that exemplifies these concepts of somatics affecting and embodied empathy. Describing the hands-­on work of Functional Integration®, Feldenkrais writes that “through touch, two persons, the toucher and the touched, can become a new ensemble: two bodies when connected by two arms and hands are a new entity.”32 Integration refers both to the improved function of the client’s nervous system and to the formation of a new neural ensemble between two selves. In this new structure, one can imagine circular feedback loops occurring between the higher and lower cortex of the practitioner and their corresponding regions in the mind-­brain of

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Figure 21. Nathalie Guillaume directs her touch intentionally without excessive concern for outcome. Nathalie and Joan Englander practice matching the sensibility of each other. Photograph courtesy of Sondra Fraleigh, © 2010 Sondra Fraleigh.

the Other. This somatics interaction leads to a revitalization of the Other. Moshe Feldenkrais describes this in narrating his work with a young teenager: A girl with cerebral palsy, aged fifteen, was brought to me from Paris. . . . She also surprised me, for she wanted to be a dancer, this when she had never been able to put her heels on the floor and could not bend her knees, which knocked into each other at every step. . . . Nobody with common sense could think that she was so unaware of her condition as to have such an idea about herself. My job, nothing more or less, was to help her be what she wanted, and she did, several years later, join a dancing class in Paris. I would like you to think about what was “better” and “more human” for this girl.33

What does it mean for this girl to become “more human”? On the one hand, this refers to her increased conscious ability to move freely, free from constraint and disability. On the other hand, this also refers to the improved unconscious communication between different regions of her brain. Tapping into, perhaps, previously unutilized affective neural pathways in the limbic system and other lower cortical brain regions helps to release our human potential.34 Child psychologist Daniel Stern alludes to something akin to this idea in his notion of “vitality forms,” or the other’s “movement signature.” According to Stern,

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dynamic forms of vitality enliven our life narratives and provide a path to access nonconscious past experience, and especially “implicit relational knowing.”35 Forms of vitality are associated with the arousal system in the brain, incorporating mutually influencing neural connections between the brainstem and higher cortical areas involved with perception, emotion, movement, and cognition. Important in the notion of vitality forms is the idea that the intentional object of introspection is outside of explicit consciousness. Crucial in Feldenkrais’s depiction is the idea that somatics affecting can enhance the vitality forms of another.

Conclusion In this chapter I have elucidated some aspects of the relation between somatics, phenomenology, and neuroscience. Somatics is a particularly privileged human practice because through intentional movement and touch a practitioner can help transform her own or another person’s soma directly, even before it is accessible to mediated investigation. In this way, somatics provides a bridge between phenomenology and neuroscience. Furthermore, it is this ability to touch the precognitive sensibility of another that is key to the radical nature of somatics practice in dissolving and creating new forms of personal meaning. In reference to her work in Shin Somatics, Sondra Fraleigh has observed that “in becoming more conscious, we learn how to be more fully who we are.”36 This analysis has expanded this sense of consciousness in Shin Somatics to include pre-­reflective experience and the ability to adhere at the level of the soma, before it unfolds into explicit forms of knowing. Notes 1. Don Hanlon Johnson, “Somatic Platonism,” Somatics (autumn 1980): 4–7, 7. 2. Hillel Braude, “Between and Beyond: Medicine and Narrative in Dick Zaner’s Phenomenology,” in Clinical Ethics and the Necessity for Stories: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Zaner, ed. Osborne P. Wiggins and Annette Allen, 119–38 (Dordrecht, Germany: Springer, 2010). 3. My style and methodology here is academic and philosophical. Like the other authors of this book, my insights arise from my personal experiences as a somatic practitioner. 4.  Hyletic data is a phenomenological term coined by Edmund Husserl. See, for example, Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Intentional Time Consciousness, trans. J. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 44. 5. Maurice Merleau-­Ponty quoted by Bettina Bergo, “Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-­Ponty (Lectures 1954),” in Radical Passivity, ed. Benda Hofmeyer, 31–55 (Dordrecht, Germany: Springer, 2009). I am indebted to Bergo’s analysis for highlighting the importance of the precognitive self of the Other for Merleau-­Ponty and Levinas. Bergo notes that sensibility presents for these two philosophers the possibility of other radical passivities in the flesh that preexists Husserl’s notion of passive time synthesis.

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7. r adic al somatics / 133 6. Bergo, “Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-­Ponty.” As she notes, institutionality is a term used by Merleau-­Ponty to refer to Husserl’s intentional foundation. 7. For more on Contact Unwinding, see chapter 12 by Karin Rugman in this book. 8. Authentic movement is inspired by the dance therapy of Mary Whitehouse. See also “Morphing through Pain and Depth-­Movement Dance,” the final section of chapter 3 in this book. Shin Somatics depth-­movement dance is inspired by the work of Mary Whitehouse and includes responsive dances as a way of witnessing as well as verbal responses and painting. 9. See especially chapter 1, “Why Consciousness Matters,” by Sondra Fraleigh. 10. Sondra Fraleigh, in chapter 1. 11. Jean-­Luc Petit, “Intention in Phenomenology and Neuroscience,” in Naturalizing Intention in Action, eds. Franck Gramont, Dorothee Legrand, and Pierre Livet, 269–92 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010), 270. 12. Bergo, “Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-­Ponty.” In a fine essay Elizabeth Behnke provides a number of examples of affective intentionality in everyday life. Behnke refers to these as “interkinaesthetic activity.” See “Interkinaesthetic Affectivity: A Phenomenological Approach,” Continental Philosophical Review 41 (2008): 143–61. Any somatic practice can also be analysed in terms of what I later call in this paper “somatics affecting,” or what Behnke calls interkinaesthetic affectivity. 13. Edmund Husserl, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten, book 1 of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Boston: Kluwer, 1983), 44. 14. Sondra Fraleigh, in the prologue. 15.  Maurice Merleau-­Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 16. For example, see Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (New York: Routledge, 2008). 17. Kurt Goldstein, The Organism (New York: Zone Books, 1995). 18. Jaak Panksepp, Stephen Asma, Glennon Curran, Rami Gabriel, and Thomas Greif, “The Philosophical Implications of Affective Neuroscience,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 19, no. 3–4 (2012): 6–48. 19. Jean Decety, “The Neuroevolution of Empathy,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1231 (2011): 35–45. Because empathy is so crucial for this analysis, it is discussed in more detail later in this chapter. 20. Marie Vandekerckhove and Jaak Panksepp, “The Flow of Anoetic to Noetic Consciousness: A Vision of Unknowing (Anoetic) and Knowing (Noetic) Consciousness in the Remembrance of Things Passed and Imagined Futures,” Consciousness and Cognition 18 (2009): 1018–28. 21. A. R. Luria, Human Brain and Psychological Processes, trans. B. Haigh (New York: Harper Row, 1966); A. R. Luria, The Working Brain, trans. B. Haigh (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1973). 22. Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone, “The Corporeal Turn: Reflections on Awareness and Gnostic Tactility and Kinaesthesia,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 18, nos. 7–8 (2011): 145–68, 164. 23. Petit, “Intention in Phenomenology and Neuroscience,” 271. 24. Bergo, “Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-­Ponty.”

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134 / hillel br aude 25. Jean Decety and Philip L. Jackson, “The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy,” Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 3, (2004): 71–100. 26. For details, see Decety, “Neuroevolution of Empathy.” 27. Jean Decety and Margarita Svetlova, “Putting Together Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspectives on Empathy,” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 2 (2012): 1–24. 28. Mirror neurons refer to a particular class of visuomotor neurons, originally discovered in area F5 of the monkey premotor cortex, that discharge both when the monkey does a particular action and when it observes another individual (monkey or human) ­doing a similar action. See Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laila Craighero, “The Mirror-­Neuron System,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 27 (2004): 169–92. 29.  Isomorphism refers to the existence of the same emotional or sensory states in the empathizer and target. For a critique of this perspective, see Dan Zahavi and Søren Overgaard, “Empathy without Isomorphism: A Phenomenological Account,” in Empathy: From Bench to Bedside, ed. Jean Decety, 3–20 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012). 30. For more on phenomenological literature on empathy, see Dan Zahavi, “Empathy, Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding: From Lipps to Schutz,” Inquiry 53, no. 3 (2010): 285–306. 31. See Fraleigh, chapter 1. 32. Moshe Feldenkrais, The Elusive Obvious or Basic Feldenkrais (Cupertino, Calif.: Meta Publications, 1981), 13. 33. Ibid., 5. 34. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, according to one prominent model of brain function, higher cognitive processes occur primarily in the neocortex, secondary-­process affective memories are primarily mediated via the basal ganglia, while basic primordial affective states are subcortical. See Petit, “Intention in Phenomenology and Neuroscience,” 271. 35. Daniel Stern, Forms of Vitality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 13, 11. 36. Sondra Fraleigh, “Somatics as Philosophy: From Spinoza to Damasio,” Eastwest Somatics Institute, accessed 2 February 2015, http://www.eastwestsomatics.com/.

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chapter 8

Somatic Awakenings Ruth Way

In this moment, I reflect on my own passion for moving and how as a child this embodied language formed its own expression and confirmed my sense of self. When I dance, I feel alive in the world and part of it. This chapter reflects on my own somatic journey informed by the Eastwest Somatics program and my experiential learning and research into somatic movement education. Drawing on influential practitioners, performers, and scholars such as Sondra Fraleigh, Pina Bausch, Thomas Hanna, and Anna Cooper Albright, the chapter also pursues connections between creativity in performance practice and guiding principles in somatic movement training. The reader will encounter the different voices and positions of I, we, and us, as the writing itself is conscious of how each voice has contributed to a developing autobiographical and intersubjective narrative. I seek to reveal how embodied knowledge can be realized as a creative tool for personal transformation and sociopolitical change. In 1998 I joined the core teaching staff at Plymouth University in the Theatre and Performance Department. At that time, there was no distinct award in dance but the centrality of the body in performance featured strongly on the bachelor of arts theatre and performance degree. As a dance artist with extensive practical teaching and performance experience, I was able to apply these skills and embodied understanding to a range of modules. The performance work generated with students was and still is experimental and politically charged with the aim to instigate a deep level of questioning and critical thinking. Central to the ethos of this learning environment is our focus on people and on the role each

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of us has to play in sustaining and developing our theatre community. My main aim was to shift the focus away from more conventional goal-­oriented training systems to nurturing students’ creative potential and developing reflective practical scholars. My teaching practice, informed by a diverse range of movement experiences, could be described as eclectic in its approach. It included my practical experience of various yoga forms, movement improvisation and contemporary dance techniques in the United Kingdom and New York, shiatsu, voice and bodywork, movement and integration, and choreographing and performing with the Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre in Ireland and Lusty Juventus and Earthfall in the United Kingdom. Seeing the autobiographical work of Bill T. Jones in New York and Pina Bausch’s seminal work, 1980, I was struck by how these dancers had found their voices and how voice established their bodily presence and connection with the audience. As a performer and dance maker, I began to work with language and vocal scores and became curious as to how a dancer finds a way to move seamlessly between the experiential, the bodily, and the linguistic elements in performance. Language and vocalization became intrinsic to my performance scores and a further means for me to express “life” on stage.

Moving On: Somatics and Creativity A somatic focus on listening to the whole person and the subsequent implication of this in context of training and educating dancers continued to direct my attention toward somatic movement education and its influence in dance education today—where there is an increased concentration on nurturing health and well-­ being in dancers. Aligned to this is a growing sense of responsibility to reflect on the deeper implications of technical dance training, raising the issue of care. Like many others, I began to question how a training program composed of mainly conventional codified dance technique classes such as ballet, Graham, or Cunningham might serve to reinforce deeply engrained postural habits and habitual ways of moving and thinking. A singular emphasis on the acquisition of technical dance skills could result in fixing the body, functionally and in perception. I was concerned how this singular emphasis could result in stifling creativity and free agency, and how this can serve to reinforce the position of the body as object, not subject. This was a positioning that the postmodern dance practitioners of the sixties challenged—as they sought to make the body itself the subject of the dance.

Searching: Moving away from Dualistic Paradigms I began to draw on research that explored issues arising from the relationship between the body and training. Actor trainer and theatre director Philip Zarrilli

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engaged with a very different body-­mind relationship through his experience of studying the traditional martial art kalarippayattu in Kerala, India. Zarrilli realized that his former “sports body” had become objectified and “a thing to be mastered,” and how this body was given permission by male culture to be quite separate from his beliefs and ethical values.1 He explains how these tensions arising between his objectified sports body and his personal body and feelings resulted in a lack of understanding of how to achieve a better integration between body-­mind. As his practice of kalarippayattu deepened, Zarrilli discovered his ability to be in the moment, experiencing flow through his practice and letting go of the need to assert his will. These reflections express something very profound about his new understanding of how body is related to mind and about the transformational potential in achieving this state of embodiment through this practice. Sondra Fraleigh, in her discussion of dance and dualism, identifies how dualism is reinforced by dualistic language, observing that typically agency and will are attributed to the mind as distinct from, and in control of, the body. I propose that willing the body to master technical dance forms accompanied by a lack of attention to the dancer’s individual expressivity can cause dancers to lose a sense of their whole person and the ability to access the agency of a “minded body,” applying one of Fraleigh’s terms.2 The dualistic approach and aim to master one’s body was certainly entrenched in my professional dance training between 1976 and 1979. The technical training was exhausting, punishing in its insistence on reaching an exact replication of the said forms. On reflection, there was little recognition that each dancer had a distinct personality and functioned very differently. I am sure many of us can own up to the fact that in training there were times when we held or restricted our breath and sometimes pushed our bodies beyond limits and capacity. Straining the body and striving to achieve would often lead us to a sense of failure because we didn’t meet our own and someone else’s external perception of “getting it right.” Paradoxically, despite being told at times to listen to our body, we soon learn to ignore how we are feeling—the feelings are suppressed and buried deep. From an external perspective we can appear to be functionally quite well, but training can actually become a form of conditioning where we begin to lose free agency. As concerns sociopolitical matters of performance, which challenge essentialist notions of self and identity, I think it is important to engender in dancers an awareness of potentially oppressive training regimes that might actually both limit and control notions of self and identity through their practice. Thomas Hanna sheds light on this in his discussion of sensory-­motor amnesia, a condition characterized by a dual loss of both conscious control of that area of motor action and conscious sensing of that motor action. Constant engagement with intensive training and repetitive movement patterns no doubt places the body under duress. In repeated attempts to learn and execute a dance phrase

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faultlessly, I recall a growing sense of paralysis, making the task increasingly more difficult and even further beyond my grasp. I became so busy with “doing” and reaching a goal that I lost my connection with moments of “now” and being “here.” As Hanna writes: “Conditioning neither requires focusing of awareness nor does it result in the learning of conscious somatic actions. Rather, their aim is to create an automatic response that is outside the range of volition and consciousness.”3 To some extent, this same aim was reflected in my training and learning environment. My sense of movement became diminished, and I lost internal self-­awareness. Now I encourage students to practice with an understanding that mind and body are interrelated, symbiotic and not dualistic. Giving dancers the time to develop proprioceptive awareness means that they can draw on first-­person observations and work with these somatic messages. Hannah explains that to sense what is happening within the soma is to act upon it, and this is an ongoing process of self-­regulation. Tuning in to oneself and listening to the soma therefore returns a level of agency to the dancer and an understanding that she is working with her whole person in the present and with its potential to incorporate past and future.

Dancing into Darkness I first encountered Sondra Fraleigh when she danced and presented a paper at the “Grounded in Europe, Tanztheatre” conference held at Roehampton Institute, London, in 2001. Her presentation had an immediate emotional impact, viscerally arresting my attention and focusing my awareness on the moment, not in a manipulative way, but a profound and thoughtful one. She discussed connections between German expressionist dance and butoh, a postmodern dance form originating in Japan and known as the “dance of darkness.” Framed by a metaphysical journey of her own dancing into darkness, she told us how she and her family had been affected by the testing of nuclear bombs in the 1950s. She revisits this in her book, Dancing Identity (2004): “As it turned out we were the fifty thousand expendables of the Southern Utah towns, and as we had later learned, the atomic fallout had traveled on the wind at least as far as north as Salt Lake City . . . they said the white ash that fell on us could be inconvenient.”4 I had not encountered a presentation where a personal story shared such an intimate dialogue and connection with the research findings. The delivery heightened my reception of the material. Fraleigh’s ability to move fluidly between these different performance texts, of body, image, word, gesture, and sound inspired me. Her speaking voice held our attention, not through a punctuated or dramatic delivery, but in clarity of intention expressed through her being. Halfway through, without any perceived effort or schism within the space, she directed the audience, who were seated formally in rows, to move with her

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to the back of the lecture hall. Gathered together in a gentle horseshoe shape, we witnessed Fraleigh performing her own butoh dance of darkness. As we stood in this unusual configuration, united now as a community, our attention was focused. Her movement and quality of being in each moment expressed a deep sense of pain, empathy, and acceptance. These emotions were held at such a fine point of congruence within the dance form, I experienced Fraleigh’s capacity to journey back into a place of healing and one of emancipation. Sensing a renewed connection with my creativity and feeling empowered by it, I contacted Sondra to express my interest in her research and somatic movement practice, encouraging her to come to the United Kingdom to teach. In 2004, Sondra offered her first U.K. workshop in London at Sadlers Wells. In 2006 I hosted her workshop based at Exeter University, and since then I have traveled to New York, St. George (Utah), Tuscany, and Greece to continue my studies with her Eastwest Somatics program.

My Own Language My somatic memory re-­creates an image of childhood family meals together. These were incredibly lively with lots of off-­the-­cuff banter, people asserting their own opinions and invariably trying to be heard over and above everyone else. Being the youngest of four siblings, I simply couldn’t get a word in edgeways and so began to create my own language out of the cacophony of voices and sounds filling the space. This obviously caused my parents some concern, so they enrolled me in speech therapy lessons when I was five years old. I remember being asked to imagine and draw a snake as I focused on the energy behind each consonant. The visual and mental image, accompanied by the increased physical sensation arising from the production of these sounds, helped me to remember how each word felt so I could recall it. The tasks were successful in engaging my proximate senses and thus became part of my somatic memory. Deirdre Sklar’s observations on somatic and verbal modes explain this further: “Words in the intimate space of sensual aliveness reverberate with somatic memory. One feels their meaning as rhythm, texture, shape and vitality as well as symbol.”5

The Power of Words Perhaps because of my early experience, I grew up with some mistrust of words, certainly in how they can be used to wield power and gain control over others. I also know through my own body just how destructive words can be. Like many other dancers, I received forceful and repetitive instructions from teachers that compelled me to achieve tasks in the way the teacher deemed correct. In this power relationship, dancers can quickly believe that they are in the wrong and the teacher is always right. This only upholds the training dogma in operation,

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and the student’s body becomes an object under subjugation. In terms of the voices present, the teacher’s voice takes control of the space and how everyone operates within it. Dancers have often lacked, and still lack, the confidence to use their voices because of dictatorial training environments. Subsequently, dancers can disconnect with their bodily expressiveness and political agency, becoming obedient and submissive rather than creatively empowered. A key principle operating in somatic practice is the nonhierarchical relationship between teacher and student. This is important in establishing that we are all part of the learning process and indeed can learn from each other. There is space for each person’s voice to play an active role in their own development and share insights and observations with the group. This encourages ownership of the processes being shared in the space and also what Fraleigh would describe as active listening, as employed in effective communication. Saying less and not judging each other also supports this ethos. It’s very easy in teaching to fill, and overfill, the space with spoken directions and forget that in silence we have the potential to gather intelligent information and become more intuitively aware. In Shin Somatic processes of responding to a partner’s intrinsic or intuitive dance, we are encouraged to describe what we see, and to own our experience of the images and movements of the dancer. We avoid interpreting the dance in projecting our own ideas about its meaning or offering an opinion. Instead we demonstrate, either through words or in movement (“dancing back”), how we have received the dance and its unique qualities. This maintains a democratic shared exchange; any transference arises out of what is present in the space, danced and claimed by our own bodies. I recall a session where Fraleigh introduced Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements (1997). The first and most important agreement is “Be Impeccable with Your Word.”6 In his book, Ruiz reflects on how we give our opinions without thinking, and too readily believe the opinions of others. Quite often when I ask theatre students to provide critical feedback on their peers’ performance work, many lack the skills to do so in a supportive and constructive manner. The feedback can be received as overly negative and disempowering. I discuss with the students how we might adopt somatic strategies to develop a much more respectful working environment and to offer greater clarity in their feedback. Students welcome potential benefits, and with practice develop inquisitive observational skills, transforming their opinions into more open questions. This results in creative and exploratory dialogue between students, and it also strips out competitive and egocentric behavior. Witnessing these attempts is heartening. The level of awareness and intention experienced by the group is most important, as they make a conscious effort to encourage others in their work and embrace its potential. The class atmosphere changes significantly as students show their capacity to be empathic toward each other and themselves.

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Somatic Awakenings Core somatic narratives of “not fixing” and “not needing to fix” continue to inform my teaching practice and modes of creativity. These narratives inform several somatic schools and methods and are key principles of “listening touch” and “responsive dance” in Shin Somatics®. As a young dancer, I spent many hours confronting myself through the image reflected in the mirrors of the dance studio. The use of the mirror in training can literally fix us spatially as we seek the mirror’s approval. I assumed through the mirror that my attempts to master codified positions and shapes and attain their aesthetic values were never going to be good enough. This agreement and complicity with the mirror is powerful in its reach and objectification of the body. The dominance of the visual, accompanied by the effort to perform outwardly, served to dictate where my focus and attention was directed. If a dancer is mostly in relation to this type of objective agreement, it can result in fixing her body and generating a form of complicity with this particular defined reality. Spatially, too, in some training regimes dancers can be largely isolated, distanced from each other and required to operate as separate bodily units. During my training I sensed this growing disconnection with self and others and sought a relational experience. Whenever possible, I would take classes and workshops at the X6 Dance Space in London and at Dartington, and in Totnes with teachers Steve Paxton, Maedée Duprès, Rosemary Butcher, Julyen Hamilton, Laurie Booth, and Mary Fulkerson.7 I actually remember feeling rather guilty about exploring these alternative and more radical movement practices. Was I slightly misbehaving and stepping out of line? No, I was seeking to dance with others in environments that were more positive and life-­affirming, environments that could nurture and develop my creativity and hold my vulnerability in the balance. Moving and contacting others through touch and the sharing and receiving of weight in contact improvisation engendered a reciprocal dialogue, one of mutuality. The practices were exploratory and open-­ended, and privileged the sensing body. As I practiced in this environment, I learned more about my presence and structural functioning and about the different possibilities open to me. Feeling part of this dance as it unfolded in the space was both healing and liberating. Linda Hartley writes: “The body and its movements provide a physical basis for consciousness and are the medium through which this can be embodied and expressed in human activity.”8 I was increasingly aware of just how much tension dancers hold in their bodies, remaining taught and bound. Through somatic learning, I realized that the balance between tension and relaxation so vital for health and well-­being was being neglected in many training approaches. The movement patterns introduced as part of the Eastwest Somatics workshops are informed by Fraleigh’s experiential learning and practice of her own

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contemporary style of somatic Land to Water Yoga.9 Based on five stages of infant development, the workshops invite participants to work with their unique bodies and listen to the body’s distinct rhythm and flow. Fraleigh describes this yoga as circular in its form—in the way it graduates from land to water and returns to land—not so dissimilar from my own desire to move fluidly between spatial levels and experience different qualities of being grounded, standing with presence, and feeling airborne. By allowing my body and its watery mass to sink into the floor as I lie on my back, I can start letting go of the tension. Aware of how breath soothes my nervous system, I breathe more deeply and rhythmically, sensing that each cycle renews my connection with the world around me. As I surrender my weight to the ground, being held by the earth, there comes an acceptance of my body’s fullness, its conscious materiality, and a knowing that this is who I am. The breath holds such conscious and relaxed modes of being in the world. I learn to accept that I can rest and acknowledge times in my life when more rest is needed to maintain well-­being. With each exhalation, my pelvis feels its physical shape and drops farther into the floor as ground. I sense that my body is breathing and extending far beyond its outer image, affirming my being in and of the world. I have observed how this instills inner confidence in me and an ability to be open to new directions. I awaken to patterns executed individually or guided by a partner to emphasize gentle, flowing movement, encouraging my spine to both listen and respond to the art of touch. In hands-­on work, the quality of listening can be heightened between the receiver and the person guiding. During the first moments of lifting a partner’s wrist with a feeling for the weight of bone, there is a sense of an invisible meeting point, where we move silently and consciously toward each other. Both need to let go of external concerns and preconceptions. Tuning into each other in turn releases something else in each of us. We start to let go of stressful habits and deeply engrained patterns, as through this empathic connection we find the confidence to follow varied and unfamiliar movement pathways. To discover something new means that we still can shift and adapt and continue to learn about ourselves. This is my understanding of living creatively and working to my potential. With anatomical awareness embodied in movement patterns, I experience greater internal space in my body and a capacity to move into the outer edges of my personal kinesphere. Then I can dance effortlessly into sweeping arcs and spirals, my spine following the direction of my focus as it transforms. My neck softens and is in correspondence with the rest of my body. The integrating power of the psoas muscle is explored in several of the movement patterns I practice and teach. In Anatomy Trains, Thomas Myers explains “the connection between the psoas and the diaphragm . . . a critical point of both support and function in the human body, it joins the top and bottom of the

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body, it joins breathing to walking, assimilation to elimination.”10 To facilitate the awareness of the function of the psoas, we can also reference our own body to support a connection. We call this “self-­referencing” and “self-­tracing.” In figure 22 I have added a point of self-­tracing, bringing my head toward my knee to realize a deeper connection with the psoas muscle. This act of self-­referencing through touch in assisting our own body can be emotionally profound. In helping ourselves, we learn to take responsibility and be resourceful. When I rest my crossed hands over my heart, the warmth penetrates the soft layers of connective tissue and bone. I learn to be gentle with myself and demonstrate self-­love. Accepting myself enables me to accept others and be more compassionate and forgiving. Leaving this space, I carry this confidence and self-­awareness into my life and to the people I meet. It is as if an energy source is flowing outward and there is a renewed vitality in my being. Connecting with others becomes playful, and part of the rich dance of life and loving. Without this ability to flow into connection, we can so easily lose confidence and begin to feel isolated. Figure 22. Ruth Way in a self-­tracing forward curl. Photograph © 2013 by Russell Frampton.

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Being Seen As part of the creative exchange encouraged in somatic movement practice, participants in Shin Somatics are invited to reflect verbally on their experiential learning, and this can be in the form of a comment, description of an image, or telling about a memory. Someone else’s experience can often touch upon your own, and this can evoke an emotional connection. On one occasion in a somatics workshop I remember feeling upset, as I wanted a closer connection with my mother. I shared this with my workshop partner in a reflective process. She asked me to sit a few feet away directly facing her, and to keep a clear and open focus. As we looked across into each other’s eyes, she brought my attention to my loving heart, and my capacity to see the other and forgive. In this moment, I felt the intensity of being seen. The connection I felt with my mother through my partner and the presence of my mentor grew and filled the space—and I wept. The love and empathy I feel for my mother has continued to grow and deepen these past ten years—as I keep my heart open and accept what is given, not needing to fix. Now I see her.

Being Heard: Autobiographical Performance At stage one in our dance theatre degree, students begin to examine the politics of the body in performance and how this can inform their understanding of performing a solo autobiographical study. Drawing on critical theory, students explore how and why the performing body is always both a vehicle for representation and simply itself. As students progress through the course, they develop an awareness of the types of discourses inscribed in the body and how these are implicated in their own corporeality. This is particularly the case for women who “must deal with a double jeopardy: their bodies are always on display and yet often they are never really in control of the terms of that representation.”11 There has been a long history of the mute dancer in training and performance. In my experience, many dancers still find working with their voice challenging and emotionally upsetting at times. I suggest that this is because the pedagogical environment and ideologies operating within it are complicit in keeping them silent. When dancers are given the opportunity to realize the connection with their voice and how it is grounded in their physical being, they find it hugely liberating. Fusing the visceral core of my body with the act of speaking out manifests an authoritative form of communication. In claiming this experience, it confirms the performative power of my presence and gives rise to the embodied narratives in my being. Autobiographical performance can therefore be a means to resist objectification and establish self-­agency. It acts as a medium to say how you feel, tell a different story, and reposition the self and its identity.

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Tapping into the memories and experiences stored in our bodies can be thought provoking and exposing. I sought to develop an environment where students could be both imaginative and playful with their material and feel supported by the group. The teaching is mindful of this balance to ensure one particular energy state or atmosphere doesn’t dominate or take hold. The ability to instigate these shifts requires a somatic process of “deep listening” and also an inner vitality to realize a new transition. This strategy assists students to avoid overworking a movement, a particular dynamic, or one way of being and sounding. Through individual tasks and partner work, students explore the full range of their voices in connection with their breathing and how this voice carries them into the space. They are no longer frightened to assert their voice and reclaim it. We experiment with the different emotional qualities and dynamics inherent in the sounding of vowels and consonants. Using their first name and varying the changes in pace, pitch, and the structure of the name the students create a musical phrase supported by their movement and grounded in their whole body. They take these short phrases into a journey across the space. I guide them to find moments to listen, pause, and be influenced by the totality of this experience. By expanding their perception, the journey transforms into a ritual, one which “honours the uniqueness of each individual and the importance of the community.”12 Fostering this sense of community and respectfulness between us becomes an important framework for this somatic learning environment.

We Too Have Imperfections! The work of German choreographer Pina Bausch (1940–2009) has been inspirational to me, influencing my teaching in choreography and performance. Bausch resisted talking about her pieces because she wanted her audience to realize their own connections with the work. In an explanation about the motivation for her work, she said, “I wanted to express something that I couldn’t express with words at all. Something I have to say urgently, but not verbally. These are feelings, or questions. I never have an answer. I am dealing with something that we all sense, that occupies us all in a similar language.”13 Bausch developed a unique way of expressing what she needed to say through a language in which different elements of spoken text, physicality, sense images, and sounds coalesce to form a resonance in the space. In terms of autobiography and performance, Bausch’s work is ripe for analysis, since she employed various strategies to encourage her dancers to draw on their own backgrounds and life experiences. Bausch is known to have given her dancers open-­ended questions or statements, allowing them “to be open, associative or intuitive in their performance responses rather than literal and closed.”14 As an audience member, I was struck by the individuality and the life-­ affirming presence of each performer on stage. It didn’t matter to me that I

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couldn’t claim to know what the work was about. Rather, the work had made me curious, and intuitively I knew it was asking for something quite different from me. The sheer vitality in the dancers’ bodies and how they direct their physical energy and focus are significant. Each gesture and word resonates with a clear intentionality but remains open to interpretation, so meaning is not fixed. A performance example I encourage my students to see is Jo Ann Endicott’s solo in Bausch’s Waltzer (1982). Valerie Briginshaw’s insightful analysis of this solo draws our attention to how Bausch’s dancers foreground the corporeality of body itself. In this solo, we witness what Endicott’s body can and cannot do. We learn that Endicott as a younger ballet dancer was very accomplished and successful, but when she joined the Australian Ballet she was repeatedly told that her face was too fat and that this made her stand out from the rest of the company. In a danced response to Bausch’s statement, “depreciation/debasement,” Endicott unearthed this somatic memory stored in her body. In her performance, Endicott grips the audience with her steely focus and the full force of her corporeality. Through her body’s openness in this performance, she is holding in the balance an awareness of her body’s perfection but also its flaws. Addressing the audience, she says, “when you sit like this . . .,” then she slumps back into her chair, allowing her legs to fall open and points to her thighs, “do your legs look fat, ugly and revolting?” Paradoxically, Endicott’s legs are in fact stunning, but she remains very human, like the rest of us, vulnerable and sensitive—and this is the point. Endicott’s authority over her body’s capacity is juxtaposed with moments of failure. Her performance achieves a form of cathartic exposition. We see her acting out this childhood slight and asking to be accepted just as she is. But simultaneously we also experience her inner defiance and courageous spirit to speak out against this marginalization and the opinions of others. “Thus, in the very act of performing, the dancing body splits itself to enact its own representation and yet simultaneously heals its own fissure in that enactment.”15 The transformative potential residing in autobiographical performance is evident here in how the body is moved to act and recover its inherent wisdom. I refer to this as the imaginative, intelligent, and creative body.

Standing in a Clear Space Early in their degree studies I introduce dance students to a solo autobiographical performance task. They are asked to bring in items of personal significance—such as a photo or piece of clothing—or an artifact to work with. The item of personal significance might be something they already have with them or wear every day. In the performance example below, the student’s black-­rimmed glasses featured heavily in his solo and informed the choreography. Objects are explored in terms of their materiality, weight, texture, and surface, as well as their signification.

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Drawing on a somatic memory from his early childhood, the student decided to focus on his educational experience of having attended nine schools. The solo reveals how the constant changing of schools and numerous teachers frustrated and disempowered him. Counting out loud, repeating numbers one to nine in no particular order, expresses his level of fragmentation and disorientation. Ending finally and defiantly on the number nine, he declares loudly “yes, nine freaking schools.” During the solo, his glasses mostly sit balanced on the end of his nose, always at the point of just falling off, most tellingly, at a point of failure. In his performance, the student creates the pervading presence of living under authority and control in a military environment. He remembers military parades, enacting these displays of physical power and precision. In rehearsal we worked together to expose the forcefulness embodied in military marching. In matching this force at a theatrical distance, he expressed an act of emancipation in a safe environment. In placing his body at the core of this experience, he made a conscious choice to step away from this forceful ideological framework and begin to shape a new identity. The solo concluded with reference to a situation where he had been subjected to distressing verbal racist abuse. He tells us he is often picked on and assumptions are made about his nationality because of the color of his skin. These moments were alarming for members of the audience, who felt the immense hurt and feeling of degradation this caused. Deirdre Heddon’s consideration of Roland Barthes’s writing on listening proposes how testimonial performances interpolate us as “listeners,” and how this compels an intersubjective relationship.16 Heddon asserts how intersubjectivity necessarily extends the performance beyond the performer. From a somatic viewpoint I see the student standing at a clear distance from this abuse and able to walk away from it.

Experimental Film Practice—Land and Body As an artist and scholar I am engaged in practice as research into performance, directing and producing dance films in collaboration with visual artist and filmmaker Russell Frampton. Our films reflect the issues and concerns pertinent to our own practices, somatic movement, and mixed media painting. As we pursue this aesthetic practice, the research questions become intrinsic to the research process itself. John Freeman writes that if “we believe that the expressivity of art is its own (or only) articulation, and that sense and knowledge can be best communicated through practice, then demonstration becomes more than illustration: it becomes the thesis itself.”17 This film practice interrogates a quality of immediacy arising from our creative strategies and how this directs the viewer to its emotional content. To facilitate this, our work engages in a creative research process of unfolding and becoming, a research methodology that supports our philosophical positioning. In this work

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we share Duchamp’s assertion in regard to how “the relationship between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed” is kept alive.18 Our dance film, Utah Sunshine (2007), is cognizant of my somatic practice and somatic memory of listening to Fraleigh’s personal story, cited earlier in this chapter, about the impact of the nuclear testing on her family.19 The film attempts to draw the viewer’s attention to a state of awakening, where the somatic and cultural reverberations occurring in this relationship between body and landscape remind us to feel, touch, see, and hear again, but with heightened awareness. Fraleigh’s actual presence in the film through her performance and impassioned voice allowed her to inscribe the film empathically with the Utah landscape and all those affected. Informed by somatic movement principles, the dancers were encouraged “to allow” rather than “to make” the movements happen. This enabled the dancers to remain open and attuned to the environments they inhabited. Frampton and Way describe the performers in Utah Sunshine as existing on a threshold and in a fluid space, one that can resist predetermined behaviors or responses: “The body, through its presence and its implicit embodied narrative, bridges the space between the technological and the complexities of real stories, real people and real events.”20

Figure 23. Ruth Way exchanging a pebble with Pat Barker in “Stone Dance,” an intuitive dance with elements of somatic bodywork. Photograph © 2013 by Russell Frampton.

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The choreographic and sound edit in our film practice aims to develop a connection between somatic and verbal modes to allow words to participate in the somatic schema they represent. Meanings are evoked rather than described. Utah Sunshine interweaves spoken text and poetic phrases with digitally layered and constructed landscapes. A focus on the rhythm and emotional resonance behind Fraleigh’s spoken words from her daughter’s poem—“and that when my heart is but a teardrop more full, it will empty itself like a stream, and I will flow out of the shadowlands”—reminds us of the vital connection between the land and our body and how we need to sustain this balance.21 In refining these artistic processes and forms, the film manifests its unique expression of this embodied knowledge. It is a living thesis, sharing my own attempt in this chapter to awaken the empathic and listening body, where we can realize the creative potential in each moment, develop free agency, and flow into connection with others. Notes 1. Phillip B. Zarrilli, “On the Edge of a Breath Looking,” in Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli, 2nd ed., 182–84 (London: Routledge, 2002). 2. Sondra Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 9. 3. Thomas Hanna, “What Is Somatics?,” in Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, ed. Don Hanlon Johnson, 341–52 (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 349. 4. Sondra Fraleigh, Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 171. 5. Deirde Sklar, “ Unearthing Kinesthesia: Groping among Cross-­Cultural Models of the Senses in Performance,” in The Senses in Performance, ed. Sally Banes and André Lepecki, 38–46 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 44. 6. Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (San Rafael, Calif.: Amber-­Allen Publishing, 1997). 7. The X6 Collective was formed by dancers Emilyn Claid, Maedée Duprès, Fergus Early, Jacky Lansley, and Mary Prestidge and named after their working space X6 Dance Space in the Bermondsey, Docklands, London (1976–80). The term New Dance was applied to their artistic work. The theatre department at Dartington College of Arts in Devon in the early 1970s trained students in release and other postmodern dance techniques and made a significant contribution to the independent dance scene in the United Kingdom. 8. Linda Hartley, Wisdom of the Body Moving (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 25. 9. A unique form of yoga developed by Sondra Fraleigh, Land to Water Yoga is based on the five stages of infant development and the methods of Shin Somatics. 10. Thomas W. Myers, Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2001), 208. 11. Ann Cooper Albright, Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 120.

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150 / ruth way 12. Daphne Lowell, “Authentic Movement as a Form of Dance Ritual,” in Authentic Movement: Moving the Body, Moving the Self, Being Moved: A Collection of Essays, ed. Patrizia Pallaro, 2: 50–55 (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007), 318. 13. Pina Bausch, quoted in Royd Climenhaga, Pina Bausch (London: Routledge, 2009), 40. 14. Valerie A. Briginshaw, “Corporeality and Materiality in Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater: Notions of the Irreparable,” Writing Dancing Together, ed. Valerie A. Briginshaw and Ramsey Burt,112–23 (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 113–14. 15. Albright, Choreographing Difference, 125. 16. Deirdre Heddon, Autobiography and Performance (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 59. 17. John Freeman, Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through Practice in Performance ([Oxfordshire]: Libri Publishing, 2010), 5. 18. Marcel Duchamp (1957), cited by Freeman in ibid., 180. 19.  Utah Sunshine, 2007. A collaborative visual arts/dance film produced and directed by Russell Frampton and Ruth Way. Running time 14 minutes. Performers Ruth Way, Kristin McGuire, Sondra Fraleigh. Music: Ben Davis (Basquiat Strings), Max de Wardener. 20. Ruth Way and Russell Frampton, “Authenticity and Perception in the Making of Utah Sunshine: A Dance Theatre/Arts Film,” in Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies, eds. Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, 187–200 (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 192. 21. Christina Fraleigh’s poetry 2000, in S. Fraleigh, Dancing Identity, 170–71.

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part three

Performing Consciously

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chapter 9

Like Drifting Snow My Head Falls Robert Bingham

December 4, 2009—Alfred, New York A medium Bengal tiger paces back in forth inside a tiny cage. Two steps, turn. Two steps, turn. The rhythm of its gait doesn’t change; there’s a mechanical quality, combined with a palpable feeling of restlessness and coiled energy. I see this pacing take place before my eyes, and I also feel it. It is I. I am pacing, turning back on myself again and again. Through the corners of my eyes, I see the bars of the cage, feel its constraint. Beyond, shadowy figures watch impassively. I am on display, unable to escape their gaze, just as I am unable to escape the contours of my confinement. Minutes later, I yield gradually to the ground and begin to press my muscles, thickened with tension, into its grainy surface. The ground resists the tension, causing waves of movement to ripple haphazardly throughout my body. I feel the movement build precipitously towards chaos, but then it suddenly transforms into recognition: I am digging. Headfirst, my body forces itself into the floor, trying to wear out the floor’s resistance with legs, elbows, hips. Suddenly, an image of a tunnel blooms in front of me. I both see it and feel it wrap itself around me. My body twists and ripples, freshly activated by these new surroundings. The tiger has disappeared. What remains is a human, tunneling his way to freedom.

In 2009 I performed a forty-­five-­minute solo, “Feeding the Ghosts,” in a large theater lobby in Alfred, New York.1 In the piece, I appeared on a 4' × 6' platform, shirtless and blindfolded, and entered into an improvisation whose sole structure

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was to remain openly receptive to, and inviting of, my personal demons and ghosts. I responded in movement to whatever feeling, thought, and/or image emerged within this structure. While I had rehearsed the dance a few times without an audience or witness, what happened in performance surprised me. Behind my blindfold, an ongoing stream of images unfolded for nearly the entire length of the dance. Some of the images were vivid and unforgettable. Others were shifty and ambiguous, never quite cohering into something discernible. In the passage above, I briefly describe two of these images. In the description, I attempt to capture my experience of them as both visual phenomena and somatic events. I saw the tiger, cage, shadowy figures, and so on, but I also felt them. The images constituted a vivid yet immaterial landscape, a landscape of which I was a part. I present the description as a stepping-­off point for inquiry into the phenomenon of somatic image experiences. I use the term somatic image experience to indicate mental imaging as experienced somatically. My interest, to borrow from neurologist Antonio Damasio, is the “feeling of what happens” when these images occur.2 My curiosity stems from the last twenty years of lived experience as a somatic dance practitioner and researcher. Within the domain of this history, I have countless times fallen, settled, shaken, collapsed, squeezed, and pressed my way into experiences in which my entire being—as a physical, emotional,

Figure 24. Robert Bingham in “Feeding the Ghosts.” Photograph courtesy of Robert Bingham.

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intellectual, and spiritual entity—has spontaneously evoked and merged into vivid, crystallizing images. In these moments, I forget myself and yet, paradoxically, I feel most like myself, fully realized. In this chapter I consider these experiences, in their diversity, with respect to their shared attribute: the presence of distinct mental images. Certainly, I have experienced what felt like flow states of losing myself in activities without the presence of images. But it is the somatic experience of spontaneous imaging that excites my curiosity. Mental images are evidence of something unknown to me. Are they messages from the “river of the psyche”?3 Echoes from present or past life experiences? Are they a means of primordial processing, perhaps mini-­ resolutions of emotional or spiritual dissonances? Are they empty of meaning, incapable of bending to rational explanation? Or, in their resistance to rationalization, are they profoundly meaningful—an invitation to ditch rationality and play within the field of the unknown? In this chapter I do not seek out truth-­claims or conclusions. Instead, I investigate somatic image experience as a means of direct, unmediated engagement with the moment and, from there, describe what emerges. I have structured the chapter as a narrative about my research process. It is conversational, shifting dialogically among voices and tenses “as phenomenology does.”4 As narrator, I loop repeatedly back to specific present-­tense experiences, aiming to accrue detail and, I hope, meaning.5 These loops tell me something about my dancing: my predilection to repeat, circling back to landmarks with new eyes. It is appropriate that my writing reflects my dancing: dancing is “thinking in movement,” and I aim for writing that taps into the thinking body.6 Besides, I researched my subject through both writing and dancing. The two became close friends, leaving their mark on each other. I let their intimacy be part of the story.

Dear Reader, before proceeding with this story, please consider the following invitation. Wherever you are, gently close your eyes. Allow yourself to settle. Feel yourself with eyes closed, breathing. Observe the formal dimensions of your body, its contours, and the manner of its falling into whatever surface is supporting it. Are you in a chair, on a couch or a bed? Feel that structure receive your body’s weight, widening the area of contact. Now, slowly, draw your attention to your gaze. You are looking at the backs of your eyelids. What do you see? Is there form? Color? Do you perceive depth? The space off to your sides? Now, within your seeing or non-­seeing, perceive your whole head, its dimensions. Can you feel the space behind your head? Allow the rest of the body’s form to flower into consciousness. Can you perceive your form together with the space surrounding it? How does this feel? What do you see? Now, slowly, open your eyes. What do you see?

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First Steps When I began my formal research in December 2012, I formulated a methodology: this was to be a phenomenological case study of somatic image experience in which I would be both subject and researcher. I established the following experimental structure: between one and three times a week I would enter an empty studio, put on a blindfold, and openly improvise movement for around forty minutes. During this time I would consciously direct my attention toward the images that issued forth, trying to perceive (and, I hoped, remember) their visual details, somatic resonances, and relationship to my movement. At the end of each session, I would write down or audiorecord my recollection of the images. I believed in the efficacy of the plan, because it was based on the way I had structured “Feeding the Ghosts.” That dance had been a richly productive source of images. Almost immediately, I realized something was wrong. Images did not form or, if they did, were of “poor” quality—superficial, fleeting, and confined to the inside of my head. They felt irrelevant and worthless, a waste of time. Worse, I tried to cling to and prolong any image that materialized, such as, one morning, the appearance of a monkey catapulting frenetically across treetops. Excited that I had landed a clear and evocative image, I willed it to stick around, hurling my body around the studio. It evaporated almost immediately. This kind of clinging, I was to learn, always made images disappear and usually resulted in a dark and chaotic visual display combined with a disjointed, inefficient, and generally unintegrated feeling through my body. It is now June 2013. With the benefit of six months’ hindsight, I see clearly the traps I had inadvertently set. And I am grateful for them. They forced me to realize the effect of predispositions on the quality of my image experiences. The first trap I had set pertained to an unconscious agenda. While my intent was to research and write dispassionately about my experiences of somatic imaging, I had, in fact, already formed a conclusion: that images hold the keys to profound somatically integrated experience. The research data was going to prove it. The second trap, having to do with expectations, related to my methodology. Three years ago, when I rehearsed and performed “Feeding the Ghosts,” images blossomed “promiscuously” (to borrow from Husserl) within my visual and kinesthetic consciousness.7 As I noted earlier, that experience led me to set up nearly identical conditions: forty minutes of open improvisation, wearing a blindfold. I assumed I would have a similar experience this time around. In constraining myself within my motivational agenda and its attending expectations, I was committing errors of both phenomenology and improvisation, the generative core of my research. My predeterminations about somatic imaging had run counter to phenomenology’s “first step [which is] is to seek to avoid all misconstructions and impositions placed on experience in advance . . .

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Explanations are not to be imposed before the phenomena have been understood from within.”8 Indeed, as Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone states, phenomenological bracketing, the procedure of suspending presuppositions, requires “an attitude of being present to the phenomenon, fully and wholly to intuit it as it appears without preshaping it in any way” (emphasis added).9 Improvisation, too, is concerned with engaging what arises in the moment according to its emergent nature rather than to judgments or conceptions formed previously. For Action Theater founder Ruth Zaporah, the improviser’s relinquishment of preconceptions is not so much loss as gain of the realization that “each present moment holds everything we need to meet the next.”10 Phenomenological and improvisational practices thus call upon, similarly, faith in the moment, requiring the practitioner to stay present with—and listen to—what issues forth in the here-­now.11 In the early stages of my research, my goal orientation eclipsed this faith. Without trusting that the moment held everything I needed, I was unable to surrender and thereby allow space for the experience I was seeking.

June 27, 2013—Berlin, Germany Lying on my back on the couch, I close my eyes, slipping into a daydream. At first, I feel a sensation: a gentle bobbing, buoy-­like, that sends invisible ripples through my fluid body. My breath. Outside, birds chirp, children shout and cavort in the playground, cars rumble over the cobblestones. I settle and drift, absorbing the sounds. Behind my eyelids, a racetrack appears. Horses gallop by in the late-­autumn sun. Farther back, a forest of leafless trees extends out toward its meeting point with the sky. The image dissolves, replaced now by a baseball field. Here there are high chain-­link fences, and behind them crowds of spectators. I hold this image. Another sensation: my head falling, like drifting snow, toward the left. I don’t stop it. I float inside this feeling, the sound of the children, the field of parched grass. Here is the invisible edge between awake and asleep.

As I lie here on the couch, somatic imagery arises freely. What has changed since the catapulting monkey? In considering this, I recall one of the first Eastwest Somatics workshops I took with Sondra Fraleigh, over ten years ago. I was performing hands-­on work with a partner, who was folded on her side on the table. Before the session, she mentioned that she had been feeling chronic tension in her lower back. For the first ten minutes or so, I concentrated on that area of her body, picturing the skeletal structures of pelvis, lumbar, and thoracic spine and considering all the ways I could gently move the corresponding joints to relieve tension. I felt tentative, uncertain which among an array of possible movement choices was “correct.” I heard Sondra say, “Find a way to relate to a part of the body through the whole body.” Instantly, my focus shifted, and I perceived my partner’s form in its entirety. I saw the way her head and folded limbs yielded

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into the table, noticed the soft strength of her breath, and began to match it in my body. I paused with this new way of seeing and, in this pause, had a clear sense of where to go next. That experience resonates with my current evolving understanding of somatic mental imaging. Early in my research, while fixated on the production of images, I neglected to prioritize the engagement of my whole self in the process. I entered with an agenda and was trapped inside my head. Bodily, I experienced a condition of fragmentation, the visual and somatic equivalent of radio static, with only occasional moments of clear image formation. The experiences I garnered from that early research are useful to me now as I lie here on the couch. Right now, I can adopt a more skilled and, moreover, pleasurable approach: why not witness my whole form melting into the cushions that were, after all, engineered to enhance my comfort?

Speaking of comfort, dear Reader, wouldn’t it feel good to lie down on a couch, or perhaps a spot on the floor, and let your body fall? To feel the head grow heavier as it rolls, ever so slowly, to the right and to the left? Or even, right where you are, to imagine this? When you close your eyes and let yourself go, what do you see?

Languaging Image Many dance scholars, including Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone, Sondra Fraleigh, Karen Barbour, and Susan Stinson, have written about the possibilities and challenges of translating movement experiences into language. This work highlights the need for scholarship that brings embodied experience to the page, though each author proposes distinct approaches and emphases. Sheets-­Johnstone argues for “metaphoric language” as a means of capturing the experience of dancing: “[To] render the experience of the dancer justly, we must leave a literal language behind to the extent that it may tie us to facts about the experience rather than lead us to a conception of its felt quality or character.” Metaphoric language— and I would add also poetic language—might appear initially to the reader as “precious or fanciful verbal excess,” yet it may be necessary to justly convey embodied experience, which can be roilingly complex.12 In emphasizing the aesthetics of dance as experienced, Fraleigh also employs a first-­person “intuitive” voice that sits comfortably astride a third-­person voice steeped in philosophical discourses.13 Her writing models the way that dancing operates as a site of philosophical inquiry, blurring distinctions between corporeal and intellectual knowledge. Barbour, too, writes about corporeal knowledge, what she calls “embodied ways of knowing.”14 Communicating embodied knowing through writing requires a particular sensitivity to language, to the ways that it

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may or may not evoke lived experiences of dancing. Barbour references Stinson’s “sensory-­rich” approach to writing, which translates the feeling of the dancing body to the reader: “Stinson concludes that through cultivating the kinesthetic sense and using kinesthetically rich words in stories, the dancer . . . allow[s] the reader a better understanding of embodied ways of knowing.”15 My interest in researching mental imaging stems, to a large degree, from the ability of emergent images to help translate somatic experience into language (and inscribe it into memory). Images lend themselves to description, and they can function as a conduit between our bodies and verbalized stories. Poet Natalie Goldberg describes the progression from body to story as composting: “Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-­out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of the fertile soil bloom our poems and stories.”16 Goldberg’s analogy of the trash heap resonates with me as I recall the rank experience of my early research attempts. Tentatively, I go back and look again at my notes, a veritable rubbish heap. I open up to January 10 and read the following excerpt: “Today there’s no clear image except rolling down the stairs outside of the museum like water. That is the image.” I vaguely remember writing these words and a corresponding attitude of defeat. Yet I recall the image itself vividly and, in this moment, it makes me happy. In the image, I see and feel myself performing a fictional solo: a slow, liquid roll down the grandiose front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Half a year later, I can once again evoke the feeling of sequential pouring of my weight, the sharpness of the edge of each step, the quick drop to the step below. The image provides a direct link to a distinct somatic feeling-­state, one that I can access again and again through the medium of language. It is a somatic reference point, anchored now by the very words that I am writing.17

Dreams Seated meditation. Ahead of me is the white hot-­water radiator, which sits directly beneath the tall south-­facing window. To its right are desk, computer, domed lamp, and black office chair on wheels. To its left, a tall wooden cabinet, where stemware is kept behind frosted glass.18 I close my eyes, allowing my weight to settle. Time passes and I see an image, one that I’ve seen before, though differently. It is a city avenue lined thickly with trees on one side; on the other side are townhouses and cars parked close together along the sidewalk. I recognize a resemblance to Boston, the city of my youth. Overhead, the tops of the trees reach out, forming a kind of tunnel as I travel forward along the avenue. Way ahead, I see a light that vanishes and then returns. As I travel toward it, the street rises slightly and I’m on a plateau.

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The trees now disappear and the sky opens up: a vast blank. The avenue, now a country road, becomes wavelike with hills and dips. As I continue forward, it begins to buck slightly, sending a pulse through my body. I open my eyes and continue to feel this pulse.

In this moment following meditation, can I blur the distinction between eyes-­ closed and eyes-­open realms? Can I perceive, within the objects surrounding me, a liveliness echoing what, seconds ago, flowed behind my eyelids? With eyes closed, I was immersed in a story whose elements—movement through changing landscape, trees fanning overhead—conversed through my attuned senses. I was not moving—at least not in an outwardly perceivable way—yet I inhabited a world that, though recognizable, was not the familiar world constituted by moving and unmoving objects, but an enhanced world constituted by objects that are movement itself. I experienced my “unmoving” body, too, as constituted by movement, and my visual and somatic perception merged into assimilated consciousness as I saw-­felt the scene unfold. Now, with eyes open, I endeavor to sustain this assimilated consciousness and to perceive my environment as enhanced, because I perceive it as a differentiated field of energy that is in motion. In a flash, delight spreads through my veins with the thought that there are no inert things here, only movement. I begin to stand up, and the air stretches to refit itself around the changing shape of my body. In the TED talk “My Stroke of Insight,” brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor distinguishes the roles played by the right and left hemispheres of the brain.19 She associates these functional distinctions with differing qualities of experience and even ways of being in the world. The talk is organized around her narration of lived experience: in 1996, she suffered a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain that severely disrupted its function. She was fully conscious while having the stroke, even able, at certain moments, to conceptualize in a specific way (as a brain scientist) what was happening. Her experience, in the beginning at least, was one of profound beauty and curiosity, albeit interrupted periodically with the recognition that she urgently needed help. Taylor describes her stroke in detail, from both subjective-­experiential and objective-­medical perspectives. Her left hemisphere, responsible for language, planning, classifying, prioritizing, went off-­line. As a result, the normal chatter in her head ceased, as if someone “took a remote control and hit the mute button.”20 Meanwhile, she lost her sense of body boundary. At one point, leaning against a wall for support, she experienced the “atoms and molecules of my arm blend[ing] with the atoms and molecules of the wall,” becoming “captivated by the magnificence of the energy” of her surroundings.21 She felt undifferentiated from that magnificence. Now fully recovered, she regards the experience as a gift, a kind of awakening. What she now knows, through the experience of her body and the science of

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her training, leads her to conclude that “stepping into right brain experience” is a choice that any of us can make—and we don’t have to have a stroke to do it.22 The right brain is the domain of connection to others and to the environment, and of compassion—feeling with rather than feeling separate from. We only need to awaken to this consciousness. I relate this to my investigation of imaging. Earlier, I described sitting on the couch. In that experience, I had the sense of a gentle, buoy-­like bobbing—the precursor to the formation of images. Yet the feeling didn’t end with my body; it included the couch underneath. There was no voice in my head, just the sound of the birds and the nearly inaudible hum of the computer. I felt undifferentiated from my surroundings. The feeling was both profound and completely ordinary, something I could choose at any time. Reflecting on this, I circle back to Barbour and “embodied ways of knowing,” considering how to bring specificity to my understanding of the concept. I go to my catalog of images, reenter past experiences through my writing. As I read the words, I have to relax my body; otherwise they bounce off of me, and the experiences my words try to evoke remain encased in ice. But if there’s a thaw, and I can feel once again the tiger’s pacing, my body responds. I feel an absence of hesitation, a sense that my body knows how to be in the moment. I feel this knowing when I take the time to settle into my body’s awareness. The images help me do this.

Toward Non-­Solidity The Buddhist saying “regard all dharmas as dreams” suggests regarding reality as a dream.23 Reality is not so solid. It teems with movement, like the atomic and molecular energy Taylor felt pouring through her body and the room around her. In my busyness, within the reign of my chattering left hemisphere—which tries gamely to take care of things—I do not find it easy to perceive this dreamlike nature. It takes time, and it requires my whole body to relax into its awareness of the present. So often, though, my left hemisphere is tilted toward the clock, and I forget to claim that time. Yet, through my somatic experiences as a dancer, I have brushed against a dreamlike quality, and I orient this research toward it. In seeking out the place of internally generated image, I am seeking a place that is like a dream. I like it there; it is a place of tranquility. Even if it is a place of wildness, or of urgent digging or mechanical pacing, there is calmness at the center, an awareness that hovers undisturbed. This work seeks to document such dreamlike image experiences. It is a tricky prospect. Language chases solidity and fixed meanings. Words divide matter and pin down its parts. Yet words are generous: they travel oceans, and they stick around. When I need a reminder, they are there: the grocery list, but also the

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feeling of falling, endlessly slowly, down the stairs of the museum. Words are the bearers of images, and images, in turn, gather more words. Both emerge from bodies, and they also shape them. What is the feeling of this happening?

Postlude This is a chapter about trusting the body. Somatic image generation, I learned, requires trust. Images are immaterial, unpredictable, and mischievous. They are not like other parts of myself, for instance my arms. I require no leap of faith to know that I can lift my arms, rotate them, shake them, and so on. There are so many things my arms can do, and I love that about them. Yet they are not especially mysterious to me. If I invest them with a certain quality of attention, they can, along with the rest of my body, support a shift in my consciousness. They can help me connect to myself and beyond. My arms have a long history of folding, grasping, slicing, and holding my body aloft. Mind-­borne images, another emanation from my body, are also not new to me. Yet they are recent to my sustained consideration, and still very mysterious. They are powerful, prone to transforming my consciousness instantly and in unexpected ways. At times, they feel like so many wet blankets, and then, moments later, blooming clouds. Like my arms, they are part of the history of my dancing body. But they don’t respond well to discipline. I have to dim the ordering part of my brain and, perhaps for a time, be lost. When luck strikes, I reemerge into the discovery that my body is, as it always is, fully here. And I find that beyond its thinking is its knowing, and that that, too, is still here. Notes 1. I later performed “Feeding the Ghosts” in Zion, Utah, and Toronto. 2. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). 3. Susan Terese Gjernes, “Embodied Practices of Active Imagination: Moving Towards Wholeness,” PhD diss., California Institute of Integral Studies, 2002, 1. 4. Sondra Fraleigh quoted in Karen Nicole Barbour, “Beyond ‘Somatophobia’: Phenomenology and Movement Research in Dance,” Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 4 (June 2005): 35–51, 35. 5. An effort to move toward “thick description.” See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–30. 6. Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone, “Thinking in Movement,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 39, no 4 (1981): 399–407. 7. Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory, 1898–1925, trans. John B. Brough, Collected Works (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Verlag, 2006), 34. 8. Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 4. 9. Maxine Sheets-­Johnstone quoted in Anna Pakes, “Phenomenology and Dance: Husserlian Meditations,” Dance Research Journal 43, no. 2 (2011): 33–49, 41.

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9. like drif ting snow my he ad fall s / 163 10. Ruth Zaporah, Action Theater: The Improvisation of Presence (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books), 7. 11. I refer to phenomenology as a practice, following Moran. Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, 4. 12. Sheets-­Johnstone, “Thinking in Movement,” 402. 13. Sondra Fraleigh, “Consciousness Matters,” Dance Research Journal 32, no. 1 (2000): 54–62, 54. 14. For a full account see Karen Barbour, Dancing across the Page: Narrative and Embodied Ways of Knowing (Chicago: Intellect, 2011). 15. Susan Stinson quoted in Barbour, “Beyond ‘Somatophobia,’” 40. 16. Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Boston: Shambhala, 1986), 14. 17. For another perspective on somatically resonant “wording,” see Deidre Sklar, Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of Tortugas, New Mexico (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 187. 18. This was in the living room of an apartment I sublet while on a Fulbright Scholarship in Berlin. 19. Jill Bolte Taylor, “My Stroke of Insight,” video file, March 2008, http://www.TED .com/talks/, accessed February 4, 2015. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Judy Lief, “Train Your Mind, Slogan 2,” Tricycle 22, no. 4 (summer 2013), http:// www.tricycle.com/, accessed May 28, 2014.

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chapter 10

Performing Body as Nature Alison East

Dance belongs to a period before self and the world were divided, and so achieves naturally that “original unity” which, for instance, modern poetry can produce only by a great and exhausting effort of fusion. —Frank Kermode

Somatic memories impel my chapter, especially the unification of self and world I experience through dance performance.1 Ideas regarding the “nature” of choreographic expression and the choreographic expression of “nature” are still evolving in me as I redefine my own “dancerly” behavior and come to terms with what is still physically possible to achieve. My body is packed with memories of somatic engagement with the landscape, studio, and stage over many years. These memories begin from my earliest childhood: running through grassy paddocks, herding sheep, tumbling and sliding down rutted hillsides, climbing tall trees, and riding on the horse-­drawn hay sled on my parents’ farm. At the time, my aesthetic expression was as an athlete, gymnast, and secret dancer—the audience my pet lamb, my stage a small circular grassy depression in the paddock, which formed a natural amphitheater with an imagined audience of hundreds. I recall a lot of swinging, skipping, leaping, twirling, and tumbling— oh, and balancing acts along the railing of the sheep yard. No theory—just the somatic thrill and expressivity of the movement itself, in contrast to the purposeful farming activities that took place around me. Later, these experiences and energies became translated into large ecopolitical choreographies that spoke of

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Figure 25. Author Alison (Ali) East, “How Being Still Is Still Moving.” Photograph courtesy of Alison East, © 1996 Don Milne.

the fragility and beauty of the land and of humankind’s heavy footprint on it. Today as a dancer, educator, and ecologist, I have broader interests that continue to reside in how we might, through the realm of dance, foster our sense of connection with the earth, ourselves, other somas, and the eco-­socio-­political concerns of the world. In this chapter I explore somatic presence in and as nature as I recount some of my own somatic memories of place. In the process I describe my ecological body as an expressive aspect of nature, and discuss the ways that time spent in the natural environment has influenced my choreographic expression and danced improvisations within natural and constructed landscapes of earth and stage.2 This sensuous engagement influences my deep sensing of self as a dancer, my relationships onstage and off, and facilitates my teaching of dance and somatics. The term somatic presence in/as nature suggests the way we experience ourselves in the world and as part of the world from a first person or somatic perspective. This includes my participation or role in the classroom, community, or ecosystem, along with my somatic relationship with landscape and earth. Growing up in Aotearoa (New Zealand), I have been influenced by the mythologies and sacred practices of my Māori neighbors. As dancer, choreographer, ecologist, and fifth-­generation country-­raised Pākehā (non-­Māori) New Zealander, I also consider tangata (people) and whenua (earth) as materially

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and spiritually part of the same entity. The word whenua in Aotearoa is also the word for “placenta.”3 The ritualistic practice of returning the placenta of each newborn baby to the earth on designated tribal territory and planting a celebratory tree at the site makes this connection explicit and real. At the end of life, a body is traditionally placed in a hillside cave or buried in a wooden casket on the mountainside. In all public oratory, reference is made and respect paid to the local mountain, neighboring river, and community house. Land (specific land) and soma (as part of a specifically located collective tribal soma) are considered together—one a part of the other—encapsulated in the term tangata whenua, or people of the land. The Māori refer to their tūrangawaewae, which literally means the place where one’s feet are woven into the fabric of the earth, one’s rightful place to stand.4 The Māori concept of whanaungatanga, in its broadest sense refers to “relationship” or “belonging.”5 These cultural beliefs signal an irrefutable ecological (and cultural) identity of self plus other plus land.6 As much as I identify with these islands of my birth, my time spent living in and journeying among other cultures and studying their dances has expanded my allegiance beyond Aotearoa, though this place is etched deeply in me. Now I know that I feel at home almost anywhere on the planet. Whenever I am somewhere for more than a few days, I feel my body sending out small tendrils and roots toward that piece of earth. It is as if the elements of that place calls and our dialogue begins. It is, for me, often an ecopolitical dialogue of the human impact on that land. I respond somatically with my senses and emotions. I want to do something, to represent something through my physical body as a dance. I bend down to pick up some garbage and search for a bin in which to deposit it.

When I speak of the ecological body, I am referring to the body—any organism (distinct and bounded)—as a microcosm of the interrelated and interdependent entirety of the living earth (Gaia).7 In considering my own bodily ecological system as a microcosm of the entire natural world, I am able to understand my place as part of all of life and my art as a product of nature herself, a functioning and balanced yet ever-­changing whole. Just as each cell of my body contains the material, mineral, and chemical components of the organic world, so my art becomes a kind of holographic representation of that world. I am nature performing nature—or nature performing herself. As poet and ecologist Denys Trussell puts it, “The body—any body, amoeba, fish or chilli plant—is not only an intrinsic eco-­system, but could conceivably have only arisen from an eco-­ system.”8 We are habitat as we inhabit, and ecosystem within an ecosystem ad infinitum. Every time we drive our car, light our fire, or send trash to the dump we affect the ecosystem of the living planet—the great ecological organism, earth. That we can only know the Other in terms of our understanding of ourselves is a concept that has formed the basis of thinking for a number of important

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philosophers from Plato through to Kant. Kant, in The Critique of Pure Reason insisted that there was, in fact, such a thing as the other, or phenomenal world outside ourselves, as well as a perceiving self whose physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions were real. But he believed it difficult to know Other as a thing in itself. Our knowing of it was limited to our own perception of it. He saw, however, a continuum between the perceiving psychosomatic human and the actuality of objects around it. Henri Bergson, in Matter and Memory, claimed that the very objects of both our perceptions and our perceptions and ourselves form part of a psychophysical continuum: “Subject and object unite in an extended perception.”9 Such writers helped provide a critical basis for many of our ideas regarding the limits of self, a psychosomatic continuum with all organic life, and the reality of “other”; and then the possibility of continuity between self and other. In describing my soma as an expressive aspect of nature, I emphasize my humanness as part of, and not something separate from, the rest of matter. This distinction is important since, even among those with the best intentions, there has been a long-­held belief that we humans are nature’s guardians, or housekeepers; the word “ecology” is from the Greek oikos, “house.” Inherent in this concept is the implication that we, as nature’s caregivers, are something apart from, and somehow more competent than, nature herself. This is a way of thinking that I do not hold to. Rather, we are nature. We are not just at home in nature, but also nature’s home. (The fact is that our bodies are home to millions of microorganisms that perform crucial roles in our bodily functions—including digestion and immunity.) When I consider my human dancing body as a particular and living arrangement of the same matter that makes up the planet, then my relationships to both my body and the earth take on different and broader meanings. My dancing becomes infused with images of nature as I trace in my dance, for instance, the leaflike patterning of blood vessels and the spiral attachment of muscles on my bony “trunk.” These, of course, are not new ideas within the past century of modern and contemporary dance—and more recently, the teaching of numerous somatic practices. Fraleigh’s Shin Somatics® curriculum model specifically includes the principle of moving with nature. As I understand it, moving with nature implies developing a harmonious relationship with the forces of nature in our dance and within our daily lives. It suggests a sense of connectedness and relationship and a willingness to cooperate with others and the world around us. Moving with nature implies the human being moving in its natural, easy (and therefore most efficient) way, tuning one’s biological senses to an awareness of self, others, and the earth. However, where Fraleigh speaks of moving with nature, I might speak of “moving as nature.” There is merely a subtle difference of perception. Moving as nature implies that we are already part of, and participating with, the elements and energies of the planet—we are one of nature’s living organisms. The flux and flow of our dance is just another way that nature’s energies reveal themselves. Our

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human gift is our reflexive consciousness of ourselves and others on the planet. As artists we can hone this reflexivity to comment on or communicate our felt/ seen experiences. We can speak or dance our nature—we are nature dancing the essence of herself. In moving with each other on stage, in the studio, or on the beach, our attitude is of being with and part of our environment, practicing a way of being that is both self-­aware and fully engaged with others and with one’s surroundings. I identify strongly with Fraleigh’s practice of taking her Shin Somatics workshops outdoors to explore connections with soma and landscape. We are practicing what educational philosopher Lous Heshusius calls a “participatory consciousness.”10 This is our gift, as human beings—our ability to simultaneously experience this sense of being part of while also reflecting on our participatory role and our sensory somatic experience of place. Our dance becomes part of nature’s ongoing “structural transformation,” part of the “ontogeny of all living organisms.”11 I turn now to some examples of my previous eco-­choreographic dance making.

When poet Denys Trussell and I decided to make the multidisciplinary performance Dance of the Origin in 1980, we gathered together five dancers, two actors (male and female), a composer-­musician, a designer, and a manager, piled them on the back of an ancient Fordson truck, and drove out of town. Our destination was a marine sanctuary where a marine biologist friend, Irene Novaczek, was resident, completing her doctorate on a species of seaweed—ecklonia radiata. It seemed necessary that our company understood something about marine biology in order to dance nature’s forms. And not just the biology, but the movement of seaweed in the tide, the smell and feel of ocean currents, and the sensation of sharp rocks and sand underfoot. We saw this “research picnic” as important to our future working relationship and choreographic process. To this day, I employ the same practices in my university courses by taking students on an eco-­dance camp—which I describe later in this chapter. The opening scene of Dance of the Origin reveals five dancers lying as kelp, lifting and eventually swirling as if moved involuntarily by the incoming and outgoing tide. I still remember the feel of our shared breathing that gradually increased with our heaving and rolling until we separated into tidal movement patterns up and down the stage. “From the waters, from / The sea breathing . . .”12 Within this poem, Trussell describes the dancer as the “apotheosis” of nature—nature performing herself in the form of the dancer: “The dancer is not so much an author of nature as a potentiality within it.”13 At the inception dancer, you waited moon-­cold in stone, radiant in the structure of a star.14

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Dance of the Origin was my first attempt to portray the elemental and nonhuman energies of nature, though the human element was obviously represented in the bodily visible actuality of the dancers, actors, and musician. The overall shape of the dance, which followed the images in the poem, was suggestive of the continuing cycle of birth, decay, and transformation. In one scene, depicting the masculine and feminine procreative energies of living beings, the male dancer, the late Stephen Lardner, and I simulated the mating ritual of the oyster catcher bird; I remember the heightened tension of our coming together thus: “The male dancer and I entered the stage from opposite sides and began to circle around its entire space, watching each other, stopping, starting, running. Then, slow careful stepping—like an oyster catcher during its circular mating dance on the beach—edging gradually closer to each other, treading carefully, excitedly, erratically, in decreasing circles. The tension felt unbearable, the energy, timing, spacing—the distance between—until—the joining.” I was no longer thinking, moving, or feeling like a human—a kind of somatic transformation had occurred. In another section I described our constructing, “a tall structure of inter-­locked bodies down which some of us tumbled in a way that resembled rock shearing off . . . an alpine face, . . . our bodies rolling imperceptibly slowly . . . taut and angular, as we gradually changed shape, attempting to portray the passage of millennia.”15 At some point, the image was transformed into the threading pathways of the river and then into fish, darting and shimmering. From angular rock forms we now became these darting, running, and leaping fish and river entities as the narrators wove the lines of the poem through the dance. As my art making began to be more consciously informed by theories of deep ecology and perception psychology, videographer John Irwin, dancer Lyne Pringle, and I created a short film, Anima (2005). In this we attempted to direct

Figure 26. The ecological soma revealed through film as continuous with its watery coastal landscape. From Anima, a film by Alison East and John Irwin, © 2005, photograph courtesy of Alison East.

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the viewer’s eye in what perception psychologist Laura Sewall refers to as “relational seeing.”16 The textures and organic form of the naked human female body were filmed as part of the watery and rocky coastal landscape as we explored “the permeable edge between [self] and other.”17 Seaweed and hair, flesh and barnacle, tidal striations in sand and spine were cut together. The creaturely presence of the female dancer-­soma became a metaphor for the soul or anima of the living earth—the sensuous surfacing of body moving over rock or rolling and moving among kelp intended as sensuous somatic experience for the viewer. Richard Shusterman suggests validity to this kind of sensual response to art by the viewer that “goes deeper than any somaesthetic feeling or expression.”18 My 1981 choreography, Waiting Trees, was inspired by the sight of a hillside of standing deadwood—a burned native forest of Rimu, Rata, Kauri, Rewa Rewa, Miro, and Matai. It was a ghostly and deathly silent scene, and it seemed as if the skeleton trees were waiting for the birds to return or for their own metamorphosis back into the earth. I recorded, “When the curtain rose on Waiting Trees, seven dancers were hovering, half crouched and on tip-­toes, our arms bent and poised, like spiders waiting for prey, or those waiting trees. We remained that way for nearly two minutes while the orchestra played eerie and windswept sounds (and until our muscles burned).”19 The memory of the choreographic detail has long faded, yet my thighs still remember that burning sensation and my feet the precarious perching on demi pointe. For those three minutes I was waiting spider-­tree.

As my dance evolves, so does my awareness of my relationship to the world beyond myself. I understand that I am the dance, “my being is in my moving,” as Fraleigh has so deftly expressed, yet even beyond the dance, I am nature dancing.20 When we truly comprehend that our energy—the energy of our dance—is part of an undiminishing continuum, then our sense of connectedness is complete. We know that we are the energy that may have once grown a tree, been part of the oceanic spume or a song bird. For the short time we are on the planet, as ourselves, we are this energy transformed. We alone can determine the shape of this energy that is us. Some might call it our soul or spirit and speak of our sacred nature. I ask myself, how will I shape my energy today? What will be my dance? How will I express my humanness—my nature? The title of this book refers to the transformative possibilities of a practice in conscious moving, Moving Consciously. I attempted to describe my own transformation as a dancer dancing nature some years ago as follows: “My dancing body-­self becomes ‘transformed’ as I become rock or ocean, fish or bird. Yet, there is never an attempt to look like these entities or to mimic them. Rather it is the sense of energy, the rhythmic pace or stillness that I seek to assume and to transmit. It is as if I become those ego-­less energies that were always there

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within me. I am transformed within the time/space of the dance. The energies of nature move through me and, in their doing so, I am transformed.”21 I describe the way that I experience a transfiguring of myself as I invoke the energies and entities of nonhuman nature when I dance. Through dancing my humanness I am, as Trussell suggests, “nature becoming conscious of itself.”22 He explains that “it is this property that is used by dance in its treatment of the body as form, as nature, as reflection on nature.” As I participate with nature, my consciousness expands toward a more ecological identity of self plus other plus environment.23 I ask, “What is the process by which I, as human flesh and bone, am able to ‘become’ tree, spider, or rock? It is obvious that I cannot actually turn into the substance of rock as if by magic. However I am asking the audience to see and think rock as they watch my tensed and angular shape fall and tumble across the stage.”24 Searching, at the time, for words to explain the ways that my somatic consciousness merges with that of the rest of nature I write how, “As I reach out with my thoughts and senses, towards the tree, admiring its shape and stature, the simple truth of its existence, we enter a kind of psychic dance as it imprints itself in my mind as both form and symbol.”25 When I become deeply attentive to myself, another person, or a tree, an image forms in my mind’s eye—a sense of connection that is wholly satisfying. This is a way of seeing that implies a transformative relationship between myself as the seer and the thing seen. It aligns with an ecological way of seeing, an ecological perception that notices the relationships between images, organisms, or species.26 Alan Kaprow describes a kind of paying attention that changes the thing attended to—a new art or life genre where one is “doing life consciously.”27 The visual engagements between the viewer and an artwork—both the lens through which we encounter and interpret the world, and the translation of our creative seeing within our art-­making—are a part of this kind of perception. This contrasts with what Kaprow calls the “enframing” way of seeing, inherited from the renaissance (the surveyor or observer from outside of the frame), which is a form of domination over an individual’s way of seeing. However, the idea of “making special,” as Ellen Dissanayake calls our biologically driven art making, often involves an arbitrary framing or encircling of particular ground (a forest clearing, rock pool, or circle drawn in the sand), thereby drawing the eye in or down into an object or place.28 There is another way of seeing into things, a sense of seeing that occurs at a deeply cellular level, listening, tuning the senses almost subconsciously. I call this “sensory seeing,” and it can be practiced by dancing with our eyes closed or unfocused. It is a form of relational seeing that comes from deep in our “subterranean” consciousness and facilitates a merging with place or object.29

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There is a place I like to go in my dance that bypasses the kind of considered thinking that is involved in learning dance steps, or writing this chapter. This place is dance improvisation. During the intuitive act of improvisation, things happen more rapidly. There is no planning, no concern for structure or order—at least not outwardly. Order evolves, as the dance determines its own shape and time. In terms of the dance movements, there is no devising of movement and no rehearsal as such, no practicing or repetition of movement for hours in front of the mirror. There is, however, memory. Memory of sensation, memory of a previous action laid down in the connective fluids, not planning but waiting for its inevitable resurfacing into the flow of the dance. And there is a form of acute alertness, highly conscious awareness, as I feel my way, all senses alert to this moment of being in the dance where I can let memory of past action re-­member itself. When I offer myself to the dance, the rest of the world disappears, yet the whole world exists within my body/soma, its holistic image visible in each moment of the dance. As we engage improvisationally in a “matching” (to use Fraleigh’s Shin Somatics term) of ourselves with each other and with the environment, there is a sense of dancing with rather than dancing for—or performing to. Or, as Fraleigh sometimes suggests, is the dance dancing me? Although as an improviser I am, on one level, highly conscious of being on stage, I have learned to not let this interfere with my intuitive movement exploration in the moment. I allow myself to track a long way inward and down. I am surface, moving over surface. It is as if each cell is executing the move—like an army of cells—moving across the land. I surface the ground, another body, or the air, like a tendril, seeking out some structure of support. I am both plantlike and animal. Naturalist filmmaker David Attenborough once explained how we share

Figure 27. Author Alison East melds flesh and stone in “Rock Improvisation” for the camera. Photograph © 2008 by Larry Lavender.

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common DNA with plants from a time before our earliest ancestors. As simple, sightless organisms living deep under the ocean, we developed a centralized organizing system and began to move and graze for nutrients on the seabed. Is this memory of our plantness still alive within our cells? When I spiral and curl and graze across a surface, I almost believe so. Yet can I, as this highly evolved human creature, really let movement happen without conscious thought or with only core somatic sensory responses directing, while still maintaining an awareness of the performance situation?30 Well not really, but I can practice tracking back to this core aspect of my nature/being. And, in doing so, I can experience a lessening of ego and a sense of newness and simplicity that is not only refreshing but also provides a rich and original source of options for my improvisations. I allow this deeply intuitive level of somatic consciousness to reveal itself and guide my dance. Fraleigh talks of “mapping our way back to the body—our body back to the natural world” (her implication is of the body as nature).31 Have we moved so far away from our “natural” animal state? Or have we merely disguised this state, these animalistic responses with learned responses? I wonder. At our core somatosensory level of consciousness, our action is purely guided by our senses.32 Fine touch sensors in the skin convey a description of external objects—signals derived from body surface touching an object. This is our most fundamental acknowledgment of self/other and of establishing our sense of self in relation to other. It is akin to the matching of one’s own neural and tissue responses that Fraleigh speaks of. I refer to this total somatic engagement with the environment as a merging. Somatic intention is an important aspect of this approach to improvisation. Perception informs consciousness, as Fraleigh states in chapter 1, and is related to intention. The somatic intention that I speak of is highly intuitive—decisions are made too quickly to allow time for the kind of intentional consideration that, for instance, might occur before crossing the road or making toast. However, I learn to tune in to my intentions as I intuitively intend toward something. While my intention directs my consciousness toward some general place, attention notices detail and specific features and fosters curiosity—an essential component of improvisation. I often speak of being in the moment as nowness.33 (In Shin Somatics, the concepts of “moving in the moment,” “intuitive dances,” and of “bringing one’s awareness to-­the moment” are akin to this state.) The next move finds itself and in that moment I move with purpose. My dance seems to know where it is going even though I would not, if I were to ask myself beforehand. My journey within performance improvisation has taught me to trust my somatic instinct and my body’s capacity for making use of whatever arrives in the moment. After all these years I still find myself arriving in places I have never been before in my dance. I now turn to the ways that my own somatic experiences of dancing, and my sense of relationship with the natural environment, infuse my teaching of

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dance studies and somatic philosophies at the university. I am practicing teaching consciously and ecologically.

Encouraged to trust their intuition and spontaneity, students of dance and somatics are guided toward individual movement creation that can often originate from deep in their core consciousness and somatosensory responses. Students reveal, through this somatic dance research, a new level of acknowledgment of self and a deepened trust in their instinctual response to the moment. Implanted technical vocabularies and postural habits fall away as students discover what it means to be guided by their senses in a non-­judgmental way. A synchronicity with Fraleigh’s Shin Somatics work has reaffirmed my eco-­pedagogical approach to teaching and learning that I now see as somatic. This form of somatics evolves, in many ways, a matching of ecological holism. In an ecologically based classroom, teaching and learning is cooperative, empathic, and self-­reflexive. The classroom functions as a healthy biological ecosystem, where individuality may flourish within a supportive community where originality and “difference” is valued. A diversity of learning styles and modes of evaluation reinforce these values. In this multidisciplinary curriculum, environmental ideas are expressed as part of an ecology of care and concern for others, human and nonhuman, and the land. Devall and Sessions describe an ecological consciousness as one that is founded on “a basic intuition and experiencing [of] ourselves and [I add as] nature.” In contrast to the dominant worldview of humans as separate from and superior to nature, deep ecology is the study of ourselves as part of the greater organic whole, “a fusion of material and spiritual aspects of reality.”34 There is a spiritual dimension to merging with, or feeling part of, the universal whole. This involves a loss of ego separateness akin to Zen meditation and the mindfulness practices of some Eastern philosophies, such as yoga, that have become infused into many somatic practices today—in particular, Fraleigh’s Shin Somatics and Land to Water Yoga. An ecological consciousness acknowledges that individuality, originality and creativity, autopoiesis (self-­making), and self-­authority are necessary aspects of ecological diversity, albeit as part of a cooperative, interrelated community. In its acknowledgment of many of these same principles, a Shin Somatics approach to moving consciously is, in my view, closely aligned with teaching that fosters an ecological consciousness. Both curricula acknowledge the interrelationship between all bodies of knowledge and a deep relationship with nature’s principles, dancing in, with, or as nature. Both seek to foster a trust in somatic consciousness—the knowledge, intuitive memory, and creative (autopoietic) potential that each soma carries within it. If we see ourselves as part of the rest of organic nature, then it is easy to imagine a consciousness that may expand beyond our skin. We are able to imagine

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ourselves as part of and participating with nature. As we move through the natural environment practicing being with rather than objectively looking at the world, we learn to see beyond our individual perspective, as Gablik suggests, and “to engage with the world from a participatory consciousness rather than an observing one.”35 Toward the end of our semester I take students on a live-­in eco-­dance camp. Sharing experiences, playing together, listening to, cooking, and caring for each other are key aspects of this annual situated learning experience in a natural forest and beach setting, some two hours from the university. Here humans are not the dominant species, and the scale of the land—high cliffs and huge lumbering seas, giant sea lions and tall trees dwarf us, putting our busy university lives in a new perspective. As we share our day’s experiences, discuss our encounters with other species, and note the repeated patterns of nature’s animate and inanimate forms, our sense of our own human community is reinforced. Importantly, we notice our own psycho-­emotional re-­membering; thoughts and memories from our prior lives surface as we walk, their memory jogged by something seen or felt. In Henri Bergson’s words, “perception and recollection inter-­penetrate each other and . . . exchange something of their substance as by a process of endosmosis.”36 Already making a connection between movement and memory in his Matter and Memory, he wrote, “It is from the present that comes the appeal to which memory responds and it is from the sensory-­motor elements of presentation that a memory borrows the warmth which gives it life.”37 We practice mark making of the human kind with found materials and watch to see whether other walkers on the track notice our small arrangements of leaves and twigs. In the forest and on the beach we allow ourselves to remain motionless and attentive for longer than is usual for young people. We imagine that we are seals, lying thoughtless, with only the roar of ocean filling our beings. We notice how the dialogue between cliffs and ocean has been happening for millennia in much the same rhythm and pace. Our appreciation for the natural environment takes on a different meaning, and we feel awed and small. Yet something of our uniqueness is also revealed, and we become gradually more aware of ourselves in the world. When we stand up to walk, we notice our footprints left in the sand. We consciously draw more elaborate marks with our feet or a stick. They form the script of a choreography that we invite others to perform. Inspired by our human artistry, we gather sticks and shells and other debris and construct our own “identity sculptures” along the water’s edge. Having explained our works of art to the group, we wait to watch them all be washed away by the next big wave, acknowledging the transitory nature of life, and a creative practice that has left no lasting impression on the balance of the environment. We determine to tread more lightly on the landscape in the future and move off down the beach trying to leave no trace in the damp sand. During one

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eco-­dance walk, I recorded the students’ somatic engagement with self and/as other in my journal: Two or three of us have wandered off down the beach. We have noticed a large sea lion lolling in the sand dunes and are drawn towards him. I watch two of the students lie down, assuming the manner and posture of the sea lion. At first they attempt to copy the large sea creature, rolling when it rolls, raising an occasional arm when it does. Gradually they close their eyes and, as I watch, appear to transfigure themselves as sea creatures in their own right. Many minutes go by as they lie, flap to reposition themselves, raise their heads, and occasionally scratch their bodies with flipper-­like hands. When they eventually cease their spontaneous performance, both students are dazed yet exhilarated. It is as if they have discovered something of themselves that had been deeply hidden from them all this time. I add here, in passing, that one of these students was a highly trained modern jazz dancer and the other a rugby-­playing physical education major. As we return to the rest of the class group, I wonder at the significance for dance education of what I have just witnessed—their unplanned, spontaneous, and totally engaged dance experience.

How we interact with and reflect on our interactions with the world—how the world reflects us—how we are reflected within it—is reciprocal. Through this kind of interaction we are able to intuitively sense our part in the energy continuum of life on earth. In Laura Sewall’s words, “Our perception . . . reflects itself back into our eyes, penetrating us. We see ourselves mirrored in the patterns [of landscape and limb, as I suggest]. . . . Our own true natural organic selves are revealed . . . [we see] that we too are natural, that we too are truly of the earth.”38 In the same sentiment Andrea Olsen suggests that “by infusing our consciousness with close attention to land and place on our path towards wholeness, we find dimensionality. Once we envision inside a living system, not outside, we recognise our participation in the events of the world. It is no longer a question of paying attention to the earth; it is a process of living our relationships with consciousness.”39 When my students and I go on our journey of reconnection with the land, there is a clear recognition, evidenced in our final discussion together at camp, of personal transformation and a new understanding of community. We understand the meaning of empathy as the ecological bodyself comes home to itself in the world of multiple and diverse others.

This chapter has been tracing through my somatic memory of living, dancing, and teaching in Aotearoa, New Zealand—land of the long white cloud (or light). Throughout you have witnessed my intuitive spiraling and twisting through the

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space, sliding and looping over and under myself as I would in an improvised dance—trusting yet not knowing the direction that the dance/essay would take while allowing some reflective pauses along the way. In describing the ecological body and ecological consciousness, I have made links with somatic consciousness and, in particular, with a Shin Somatics holistic and empathic approach to learning through our body—as our individual, yet communal and participatory dance. I hope you will find the space to evolve your own images and patterns of perception that resonate with your dance, are transformed by your experience of moving consciously, as you search out your own ecological connections with each other and the earth. Notes 1. The epigraph to this chapter is from Frank Kermode, “Poet and Dancer: Before Diaghilev,” in What Is Dance?, ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, 145–60 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 148. 2. The term ecological body has been described in various ways by authors such as cognitive psychologist Urich Neisser (1928–2012); performance philosopher Sandra Reeve in Nine Ways of Seeing a Body (Devon, U.K.: Triarchy Press, 2011); Deborah Bird Rose, “Dialogue with Place: Toward an Ecological Body,” Journal of Narrative Theory 32, no. 3 (fall 2002): 311–25. I use the term to describe a body as interrelational with and inseparable from the natural world. 3. See Sidney M. Mead, Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori Values (Wellington, New Zealand: Huia Publishers, 2003). 4. See Tania Ka’ai, John C. Moorfield, Michael P. J. Reilly, and Sharon Mosley, eds., Ki Te Whaiao: An Introduction to Māori Society (Auckland, New Zealand: Pearson Education, 2004), 18, for one definition of Tūrangawaewae. 5. Ka’ai et al., Ki Te Whaiao, 18. Whanau (family), whanaunga (extended family), and whanaungatanga (relationship). 6. For a description of an ecological identity of self plus other plus environment, see Suzi Gablik, The Re-­enchantment of Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991), and Laura Sewall, Sight and Sensibility: The Eco-­Psychology of Perception (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Penguin Putnam, 1999). 7.  Gaia is the Greek term that refers to the concept of earth as a whole, living, breathing organism. It includes its biosphere and noosphere. 8. Personal correspondence with poet, pianist, ecologist Dr. Denys Trussell, April 29, 2013. 9. Henri Bergson states that “subject and object would unite in an extended perception the subjective side of perception being the contraction effected by memory, and the objective reality of matter fusing with the multitudinous and successive vibrations into which this perception can be internally broken up.” Matter and Memory, 1912, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (reprint Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004), 77. 10. Lous Heshusius describes a participatory consciousness that is “passively alert, vigilant but non-­obtrusive” in “Listening to Children: ‘What Could We Possibly Have in Common?’ From Concerns with Self to Participatory Consciousness,” Theory into Practice 34, no. 2 (1995): 117–23, 122.

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178 / alison e ast 11. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (London: Shambhala Press, 1987), 128. 12. Denys Trussell, Dance of the Origin (reprint Auckland, New Zealand: Origins Dance Theatre, 2004), 3. The complete poem was performed as narration for the dance and first published at the time of the performance, November 22–24, 1980. 13. Denys Trussell, “Returning to the Dance,” in Dance of the Origin, 59–67, 66. 14. Ibid. Dance of the Origin, 11. 15. Alison East, Teaching Dance as if the World Matters: A Design for Teaching Dance-­ Making in the 21st Century (Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Press, 2011), 73, 159. 16. Sewall uses the phrase “relational ways of seeing” in Sight and Sensibility, 124, 130. 17. Ibid., 137. 18. Richard Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 125. I develop this idea further, describing how nature speaks phenomenologically rather than metaphorically through (and as) the human soma, in the article: Ali East, “Sensual Interfaces: Dancing Anima in Aotearoa, NZ,” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 5, no. 1 (2013): 57–71. 19. East, Teaching Dance as if the World Matters, 76. 20. Sondra Fraleigh explains that the dancer and the dance are inseparable in Dance and the Lived Body (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987) 41. 21. East, Teaching Dance as if the World Matters, 68. 22. Denys Trussell, “Nature and The Pakeha: Finding a Way in Oceania,” Pacific Ecologist, New Zealand 2 (2002): 48–55. 23. Suzi Gablik uses this combined term in her “Towards an Ecological Self,” in Theories of Contemporary Art, ed. R. Hertz, 2nd ed., 301–9 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993). 24. East, Teaching Dance as if the World Matters, 72. 25. Ibid., 75. 26. For an ecological way of seeing, see Sewall, Sight and Sensibility, 124. 27. Alan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 195. 28. Ellen Dissanayake describes art as “making special” in What Is Art For? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 74. 29. The term subterranean is from Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 319. 30. Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, 149. Damasio describes somato-­sensory response as a combination of several subsystems, each evolving in different developmental periods and each conveying information to the brain differently. 31. Sondra Fraleigh, “Consciousness Matters,” Dance Research Journal 32, no. 1 (2000): 54–62, 54. 32. About our core somatosensory level of consciousness, see Damasio, Feeling of What Happens, 149. 33. The place of “nowness” is both empty and full, active and ready, yet not needing to go anywhere. Francisco Varela also uses the term in The View from Within: First-­Person Approaches to the Study of Consciousness, ed. Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shearer, 111–40 (Thorverton, U.K.: Imprint Academic, 2000). 34. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 65, 66.

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10. performing body as nature / 179 35. Gablik, “Towards an Ecological Self,” 307. 36. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, 72. 37. Ibid., 197. 38. Sewall, Sight and Sensibility, 150. 39. Andrea Olsen, Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002), 227.

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chapter 11

Embodied Dreams Jeanne Schul

Whether or not we remember our dreams upon waking, it is part of the human condition to dream when we sleep. For some of us, this natural brain function brings powerful somatic experiences that demand our immediate attention. Those images that haunt us long after the visual stimulus has disappeared are often very vivid somatic sensations that rush through our bodies and shock us into an awareness of a highly significant psychic process at work within us. In dreamtime, an embodied image can be experienced on a somatic level with a wide variety of possible manifestations. These physical responses of the body in the dream state are experienced as inarguably real from within the dream, as well as upon waking. When asked about this phenomenon, Jungian analyst Barry Williams replied: It really did just happen. Those are the dreams that we’re drawn into deeply. The attempt of the dreamer upon waking is often to get away from that . . . but the point is that the dream had you. It was having you, as if it put you to sleep to have you. In those moments, you’re completely enmeshed in the reality of that world, and it’s hard to return or to move out into ordinary consciousness again, because the valiancy, the energy of the meaning of the dream is extremely strong at that point. It’s really got you. It’s hooked you. Those are special dreams. Those are the ones that leave trails behind them in your life and are to be paid attention to.1

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Body-­based dream images leave the dreamer with profound somatic sensations that can be absolutely terrifying or highly pleasurable. What may start out as a seemingly simple dream can lead to profound personal insights when the feelings and physical reactions to the dream are worked with somatically. Many of us are somatic dreamers; that is, we experience vivid physical sensations during dreamtime. In this same way, somatic dreams often leave us with powerful images. An exploration of these images can connect us with archetypal figures that span historic eras and move across civilizations. Somatic dreams may draw attention to a physical symptom or psychological issue of which we are not yet aware. By working with the area of the body depicted in the dream, the somatic therapist can help the individual become more cognizant of what is changing and might need attention. In this chapter, we define somatic movement therapy in relationship to psychology as what Deldon Anne McNeely calls “a process occurring between a person and a therapist who uses bodily focus and movement to achieve their mutual goal: the discovery of heretofore unrecognized aspects of the psyche.” According to McNeely, the most significant prerequisite for training to become a somatic therapist is to have experienced transformative somatic therapy oneself, “to overcome one’s own blocks and armors to feeling, and to know one’s own capabilities and limits.”2 It is from this frame of reference—as a registered somatic movement therapist and depth psychologist—that I take the risk of sharing my personal experiences of working two somatic dreams. I describe my application of the Shin Somatics® approach to self-­reference touch, teaching through touch, and dance improvisation, as I use it when working with archetypal dreams. In this chapter, I make connections between the soma, somatic dreams, the chakra system, and archetypal imagery. I define these terms as they relate to the therapeutic exploration of dreams. There are a multitude of descriptions of soma. For me, soma includes the sensations that I experience—while asleep and awake—that I can identify with my eyes closed. These are specific neurological experiences that I can pinpoint in an exact location within my physical being, such as the gradual numbness of my index finger starting at the tip and progressing toward the first knuckle. Looking at my finger does not provide useful information. Instead, becoming still and taking an internal scan is the most effective way of becoming conscious of my soma. One way I do this is to lie on my back, close my eyes, and focus on my breathing until I can release all the air during exhalation, allowing me to take in a full, deep breath. Then, I imagine breathing healing energy into the back of my neck: noticing any discomfort there and seeing myself exhale the tension and stress. This way of scanning with the breath continues throughout the regions of my body, after which I am more aware of where I feel good and where I am tense, numb, or in pain. By paying attention to soma in this way, I can sense my state of being and make subtle adjustments and, in so doing, hopefully avert more severe symptoms.

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This chapter explores methods of working with somatic dreams, which are dreams accompanied by very visceral sensations in specific areas of the body. I will also focus on symptoms—not in an effort to fix them—but as a way of acknowledging those regions of the soma that are calling for attention. The location of symptoms or somatic dream sensations point the somatic therapist to the chakras, which are energy centers aligned along the spinal column. While there are a wide variety of ways of working with dreams, I focus on self-­reference touch and hands-­on somatic work, as well as moving the chakras, as my approach to somatic dream work. The chakra system is one aspect of ancient Yogic philosophy. Here I focus on the energetic intention of each of these seven regions, as well as some of the consequences of a blocked chakra. Chakras offer a way to work with the somatic unconscious—that aspect of the soma that holds the scars of repressed memories of past trauma, as well as forbidden pleasures—providing a symbolic frame of reference to explore the effect of psychological issues on the physiological health of the individual. When working with dreams, I examine the central image, or the focal point of the dream. When initially approaching the dream, I consider personal associations with the main image. I ask: what does this dream remind me of in my past? In an effort to discover the dream’s meaning—whether I am exploring

Figure 28. Jeanne Schul in the drone dreamtime of “Invisible Container,” a butoh dance experience improvised in Santa Barbara, California. Jeanne Schul is at bottom right; other participants are Matthew Nelson (left), Pamela Wunderlich (upper right), and Sri Van der Kroef (left). Photographs © 2011 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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my own dream or that of a client—I continue to expand the parameters of the dream. The next step is often amplification, considering a more global perspective of the dream image. When amplifying a dream image, I look for similar images in myth, folk stories, and fairy tales. Often, this moves the process into the archetypal domain—beyond personal experience—into the realm of shared human history and legend. An archetype cannot be easily captured in a simple definition; it often points to large conceptual ideas, like death or the divine. In this way, a personal dream image can connect us to universal truths that may hold meaning for the larger community, as well as for us individually.

Dream 1. Wild Wolf To illustrate a profoundly somatic dream, I will share my own experience with Wild Wolf. In early summer, I awoke before daybreak and felt the need to turn myself around so that my head was at the foot of the bed, under the ceiling fan and closer to the open window. Soon, I fell back into a deep sleep. The following is my Wild Wolf dream: Suddenly, I feel hot breath on my right cheekbone sliding up toward my ear. A large black wolf is standing over me on the bed, rubbing his cool snout against the right side of my face. I feel the smooth silkiness of his thick dark fur against my skin. His black face and yellow eyes look into me. Instantly, I begin to panic, convinced he came in through the open window. Fearful of what he might do, I try to subtly turn my cheek away from his teeth, which I sense so close to my face. I am aware of burrowing the right side of my face into my pillow, but almost immediately he moves over to my left cheek and nuzzles up my cheekbone and into my ear. Now I truly feel panicky. I awaken to the sound of the wolf breathing in my ear, feeling its hot moistness against my temple.

Gradually I realized my own rapid breathing and racing heart had awakened me and released me from contact with this Alpha male energy whom I came to call Wild Wolf. There was no way I could slough this off as “just a dream.” My face was still reverberating from Wild Wolf’s touch. The sounds of the wolf’s breath in my ear were still intensely vivid. My own respiration and heart rate remained accelerated. Upon awakening, this dream visitation felt extremely real! So, what do we do with such a powerful somatic dream experience? On so many levels, this anxiety-­provoking dream felt like a nightmare. According to dream specialist Steven Aizenstat, “nightmares are simply the life force revealing itself in its most raw, wild, and threatening form.” We find these dreams so overwhelming because of how incredibly real and truly threatening they feel to our very survival. And yet the pivotal issue is how we deal with them. Aizenstat insists: “The simple fact is that nightmares cannot be ignored, forgotten,

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or explained away. I have found it imperative not to avoid the intolerable, but instead to find the strength and skill needed to go face-­to-­face, toe-­to-­toe, with the ‘terribles’ of the night.”3 The primal nature of nightmares reveals our most basic issues, shaking us to our core and requiring a response. As frightening as this somatic dream experience was, I sensed that Wild Wolf had a gift for me. Having worked many scary dreams before, I knew this one would stay with me until I gleaned its message. I repeatedly asked myself: Why is Wild Wolf visiting me now? This poetic fragment grew out of living that question: Your gravelly whisper urges me to see the possibilities, Trust the inner voices and my deeply embodied wisdom. You are Guardian, Teacher, and Friend; with you at my side, A growing ferocity grounds me: I am no longer prey.4

When I took this experience to a dream group, I found myself tracing the touch of Wild Wolf’s snout across my cheekbone toward my ear with my own fingers and palm slowly—just as he had done in my dream. The group commented on the sensuousness of my touch, which startled me because I had been so terrified by the sensation in the dream. Some members of the dream group declared that they were envious of my dream! Because of the panic Wild Wolf’s touch stirred in me, I was amazed by this reflection. And yet, as I continued to work the dream with a Jungian analyst, he delighted in the primal energy force that had come for me. Once I referenced Wild Wolf’s contact with me through touching my own face like he did, I could begin to acknowledge the sensuality of the dreamtime encounter. To my great astonishment, what I had found so frightening was actually a powerfully energizing life force. Wild Wolf had come to awaken me out of a numbing relationship, which—while not destructive—was also not life-­ giving. It was simply benign. Like so many, I did not heed Wild Wolf’s wisdom immediately. I was intimidated by such wildness and fearful of where it might lead me, but Wild Wolf’s very alive presence stayed with me in a felt sense. So, what about Wild Wolf was archetypal? He slipped in through my bedroom window, unbidden, while I slept and took possession of me. He had the power to abduct me in dreamtime and for a long time thereafter; his earthy presence haunted me in my waking hours. As an archetype, he could not be explained away, nor could his effect on me be limited by narrow parameters. Specifically, the archetype of the wolf is the epitome of wild, instinctual energy, which had awakened me from a deep psychic sleep and commanded my attention. On another archetypal level, Wild Wolf had breathed the breath of life into my very being. He filled me with an intoxicating desire for more real life contact with vivacious energy. After much inner work and outer struggle, I abandoned the

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deadening relationship and was free to yearn for a more passionate engagement with life.

Dream 2. The Bloodsucker When intense nightmares have threatened my sense of well-­being, I have found the more physical approach to working with the embodied image to be extremely effective; a somatic therapist has proven helpful in accessing my somatic dream memories. It is important to call on our allies when faced with shocking nightmares, those who can listen to our dream and reflect back to us. On one occasion, I had a dreamtime encounter with an enormous bloodsucker. I awoke from this horrendous dream frantically brushing my right thigh with both hands, desperate to knock off the giant, prehistoric predecessor to the mosquito attached to that thigh. My sense of panic was exacerbated by the fact that I could actually feel my right hand banging into the metal exoskeleton of the archaic beast as I anxiously brushed down my upper thigh. I had the horrifying feeling of its proboscis burrowing into my thigh muscles and sucking out my blood; but to my great despair, I could not get this thing off of me no matter how hard I banged into the unyielding frame. This felt sense of being drained of my lifeblood awakened me in a state of complete panic. I dove out of bed and wrote down the dream. However, that was not enough. I needed to draw the beast in vivid colors as I surveyed it with my inner vision. The dream image suddenly returned months later in a somatic session. The practitioner intuitively brushed my right thigh, sensing negative energy that needed to be removed. I was shocked to find myself reexperiencing the dream image digging relentlessly into my thigh muscles. However, this time I had support. By verbalizing what arose for me with the therapist’s touch, I was able to revisit the dream sensations. Then, as she scraped, I was able to remove the energy sucker once and for all. Her intense sweeping motion gave me the somatic sensation of being rid of this life-­devouring creature. Sometime after this somatic session, I drew the bloodsucking beast once again, but this time it was to rid myself of its penetrating proboscis and reclaim my lifeblood. The psychic and physical experience of the somatic practitioner’s hands scrapping off the predator enabled me to become aware of the intensity of the archetypal grip this somatic dream had on me. This phenomenon can be explained by conceptualizing the body as a “point of contact with the unconscious” and referring to the “somatic unconscious,” through which the somatic therapist uncovers memories buried in the body through touch that were not accessible in analysis.5 This somatics session took me beyond merely removing the terrifying sensations associated with the dream. I was able to look at the aspect of my life that was draining my lifeblood and realize that I felt as though I could not escape it. In this way, the dream and the somatic practitioner helped me look at

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my life with greater clarity and gave me validation for what I had been feeling but was deathly afraid to change. To associate with the dream image, the bloodsucker attached to my thigh was like a giant mosquito. A common mosquito is an annoying insect. Often, our first impulse is to swat at the irritating buzz. Its bite causes itching and inflammation. However, a tiny mosquito can carry serious diseases that can be debilitating, like malaria and dengue. Thus, a mammoth mosquito with a virtually indestructible metal exoskeleton is a very threatening adversary, indeed! Archetypally, blood is the life force; to be drained of blood is to have your life force drawn from you. By way of amplification, vampires are the most infamous bloodsuckers in mythology. Unlike this specific dream image, vampires are often depicted as mysterious as well as seductive, and their bite has been described as both “erotic and chillingly repugnant at the same time.”6 Like the simple mosquito, vampires feed between twilight and dawn; archetypally, this reflects the being’s inability to face the light of consciousness. As a predator of the unconscious, the vampire in dreams represents an inner character that is potentially deadly or worse. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the vampire is that it turns its victim into a vampire; to be bitten is to become one.

In an interview, I asked Jungian analyst Barry Williams what we should do with these somatic dreams. He answered: “When great dreams announce the journey you’re undertaking, you need to have a guide.”7 The combination of a Jungian analyst and a somatic therapist is recommended by Deldon McNeely as the most effective approach to exploring personal issues.8 As Williams points out, “it’s hard to let go of an old pattern, an old identity, an old history, the old drama, the old story, the old way of being, or the old vocabulary.”9 Powerful, archetypal dreams come to us with a purpose. They terrify us in order to get our attention; this is particularly true when we have a series of frightening dreams. The nightmare is quite literally a wake-­up call from our inner world, alerting us to emotional turmoil. Nightmares often visit when we are in major life transitions, when we are facing decisions that could maintain the status quo or move us toward our full potential. Many people, however, are so horrified by “bad dreams” that they want nothing to do with them. As dream worker Talluluh Lyons explains, “nightmares spotlight a crisis of fragmentation and thrust us into the midst of the upheaval.” Many do not feel they have the strength within themselves to look more deeply into the message they are receiving. It is easier to just deny the significance of the terrifying dream. However, Lyons tells us that “a basic principle of dream work is that we will not remember a nightmare until we have both the energy and resources to deal with it.”10 Our somatic dreams offer us guidance along the path of becoming more fully who we are capable of being. It is of primary importance not to allow anyone to

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demean our dreams or to divert us from unfolding into our true selves. This so often happens when people—consciously or unconsciously—fear their psychic transformation because of their own refusal to change. Surrounding ourselves with a support team is a healthy choice, which could include loved ones, somatic therapists, and dream workers. By honoring our dreams, we also honor our own psyches and somas. When we explore how each specific area of the body offers a particular approach to the symptom or dream sensation, the presenting dream image leads the somatic session toward the area of the body that is calling for attention. The practitioner’s touch may create a resonance with an embodied memory, which can then be associated with a past injury or violation. This image can also open up an archetypal world of possibilities for amplification. By becoming aware of the archetypal meaning of an image, the client has access to a more universal experience, creating a sense of connection to others who have had a similar issue, where there was formally a sense of isolation.

Chakra Explorations Once we focus on where the symptoms or vivid dream sensations are manifesting in the body, we can begin to explore the chakras or energy centers, which comprise seven locations on the spinal column as described in ancient Sanskrit writings on Kundalini Yoga, which depict the “Supreme Power” in the human body.11 Carl Jung—founder of Jungian psychology—imagined the chakras as the path of self-­actualization and envisioned the individual chakra symbols to be “memory aids for the specific phases on this path of individuation.”12 From this frame of reference, an intentional focus on the chakras offers a way for the individual to become more fully who she or he is capable of being. Jung asserted that individuation is a lifelong process: “Individuation . . . is a process of differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.”13 This process of waking up to our full potential can be assisted by our dreams, because our dreams offer us a glimpse both of our possibilities and of what we know least about ourselves. Dreams enable us to continue to unfold by bringing to consciousness what we have repressed, what we have not believed ourselves capable of doing, as well as what we most fear that is blocking our evolution. By developing an awareness of each area of the body in which an energy center resides, an individual can move that body part in an effort to activate the chakra, beginning at the base of the spine with the first chakra and progressing to the crown of the head. When we focus our intention on a particular area of the body, we can begin to bring awareness into the individual chakra that is involved. In the bloodsucker dream, the attack involved the upper leg—the first chakra—so having the life force sucked out of this primal energy center threatened my very survival.

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The focused attention to the involved chakra enables repressed memories or dream images to reemerge—especially with the support of a somatic therapist—offering the individual an opportunity to work with the traumatic event, which might have caused the person to close down this specific energy center by becoming numb or disassociated from this area of the body. By working in this way, individuals can begin to reintegrate that aspect of their psyche-­soma, which in effect enables them to progress in their process of individuation.14 The chakra system is philosophically conceived of as the subtle body, which is depicted as the liminal space between the spiritual and the physical realm.15 Another way of imagining this energy that envelops and permeates our physical selves is as the connecting tissue between psyche and soma, through which the life force flows in each of us.16 Since chakras are located in specific areas of the body, we can access the kinesthetic memory embedded in each respective aspect of our anatomy. Judith Harris, a Jungian analyst and Yoga teacher, asserts that “each chakra has within itself the capability to develop a new part of the personality within an enclosed vessel, corresponding to its position on the spine. As the energy rises, consciousness intensifies.”17 The process of working with the chakras is ever unfolding; as with the individuation process, one is never finished. There is always the next task: more of the persona—the mask one turns toward the world—to strip away; something else to discern; a new dream image to unravel; another challenge to confront; a family secret to uncover; a new sense of meaning to discover. Just as complexes continuously manifest, even among the most psychologically sophisticated, chakras will often become blocked, distorting the flow of energy throughout the body. This is the journey toward wholeness in which the chakras invite us to partake.18 The subtle body philosophy of Kundalini Yoga, the yoga of awareness, has archetypal dimensions. The life force is symbolically depicted as a snake—kundalini—lying coiled at the sacrum, or base of the spine. When activated, it is said that the kundalini awakens and rises up the spinal column, filling the subtle body with psychic energy. As the kundalini rises, the root chakra at the base of the spine is connected to the crown chakra, which symbolically unites Mother Earth with Father Sky. The Sanskrit word chakra means “wheel” or “disk” and is often described as a spinning vortex. The imagery surrounding the chakras is rich in metaphor, often described as unfolding lotus flowers; and, like the petals of the lotus, “chakras can be open or closed, dying or budding, depending upon the state of consciousness within.”19 Like Yoga, my approach, which I call dancing the chakras, focuses the attention of participants on the intention of each chakra.20 However, unlike Yoga, dancing the chakras taps into the sense of the limitlessness that comes with moving spontaneously to music, whether that music is flooding the senses from an external source or vibrating from within the body. Improvisation is the root creative process in dance. Unlike Yoga, which has specific asanas designed to

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address each chakra, dancing spontaneously enables individuals to move expressively as a way of communicating their current state of being. This somatic form of moving offers an effective method of animating soma, soul, and psyche. This is especially true when the dance focuses on the chakras in an effort to awaken the energy that is often lying dormant within them and to bring the person into balance. The area of the body where dream sensations manifest is highly significant. For example, in the bloodsucker dream, the issue focuses on the right thigh, which involves the first chakra. These dream sensations could be addressed by dancing the first chakra. This would involve the whole lower body moving in a very grounded manner. Powerful leg gestures that connect with the earth by stomping would release the pelvis and enable it to descend, focusing on the pelvis as the center of gravity. This movement—reminiscent of the dances of Ghana— grounds the entire torso and helps the individual connect with the intention of this chakra, which is a declaration of a personal right to be here. This type of movement activates the muscles and neurons in the toes, feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, and pelvic floor—the region of the first energy center. The first chakra focuses on the basic survival instincts, which enables us to feel secure in our environment.21 Marion Woodman, a Jungian analyst specializing in reconnecting with the feminine body, describes this first, or root, chakra as “a kind of primal hold on life, desiring food, desiring comfort, desiring love—all the basic needs of a young child.”22 When the root chakra is open and activated, the individual experiences a sense of stability and well-­being. However, when there is a blockage, issues can arise, such as chronic lower back pain, frequent illness, and generalized anxiety. However, by mobilizing the pelvis, feeling the toes spreading like roots in the earth, and finding stability in the legs like the trunk of a tree, participants can begin to sense that I am okay; I can get through this; I am strong enough to survive. This reinforces the first chakra expression of “I have,” which focuses on our right to be here on the earth, in our body.23 It is not uncommon for people to have archetypal dreams that symbolize the Great Goddess or Mother Nature, when they are struggling with first chakra issues. This illustrates the compensatory nature of dreams; that is, when our psyche or soma is out of balance, often our dreams offer us images of what we most need. For example, during the time I had the bloodsucker dream, I also dreamed of my left hand sliding across oceans of white silkiness to be received by the hand of a great female force who, then, weaved the fingers of her right hand into the fingers of my left hand. I felt such a surge of energy emanating from her touch that I woke in shock and sat straight up in bed. The sensation was so incredibly vivid that it felt like a visitation, not “just a dream.” Psychologically, the essence of this divine feminine reached out and touched my feminine essence, flooding my hollow inner spaces with a sense of self-­worth. Archetypally, it was a female version of the divine masculine reaching out and touching the hand

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of Adam, as captured by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. At the time of the dream, I certainly did not make this association, as I was feeling emotionally devastated. This amplification of the dream image came into my awareness more than a decade later. The power of this visceral experience is still with me, offering strength when I most need to feel empowered. The second chakra is the center of the reproductive organs located in the pelvic bowl. The dance of the second chakra involves the syncopated rhythms of the samba, salsa, cha-­cha, and rumba, inviting participants to undulate their hips in fluid figure eights and rhythmic rocking patterns that are key ingredients in Latin and jazz music and dance. The element of this chakra is water, and its desire is pure pleasure, expressing “I feel.”24 James Brown’s iconic song begins— “I feel good, I knew that I would now!”—which goes on to extol the pleasures of sensuality. Eros and Aphrodite—the god and goddess of erotic love—are the archetypes of this energy center. However, in Western cultures still heavily influenced by puritanical values, pelvic movement is shunned in public. When there is a disassociation from the second chakra, symptoms spring up that are related to sexual dysfunction, as well as issues of emotional instability. When the pelvic region is blocked, numbed, or unsatisfied, dreams often compensate by presenting highly seductive sexual sensations. The third energy center is located at the solar plexus: the nerve ganglia just below the rib cage and under the heart. The element of this chakra is fire, which is often reflected in the symptoms affecting it, such as burning sensations, arrested breath, or a gripping sensation in the gut. Those who disassociate from this energy center may feel constantly manipulated and reportedly suffer from digestive problems and excessive fatigue. The Warrior archetype is at play in this energy center and can be tapped into through powerful kicks and slashing arm motions, as practiced in the martial arts. This is the dance of the third chakra, the center of personal power, as expressed in the phrase “I can.”25 The intention of this chakra involves standing up for one’s self. When the third chakra is open with energy flowing, the individual experiences a sense of vitality, personal power, and purpose in life. The fourth chakra of the heart is the place of compassion for our ourselves and our community. The expression is “I love” in the manner of the archetype of loving kindness, Jesus Christ.26 It is accessed somatically with movements that open the chest from the sternum and flow through the range of motion in the shoulder girdle and into the scapula. Classical ballet arm positions or port de bras express this movement quality of openheartedness and expansion. In the elegant Latin dance, bolero, it is el abrazo, or the all-­encompassing embrace of one another in dance frame. In daily life, it is the mother breastfeeding her infant, offering concrete connection from mother to child with the nourishment of the heart chakra. An archetypal image of the fourth chakra is the Pietà, the Madonna holding her crucified son, Jesus, in her arms. When the fourth chakra

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is negatively manifested, however, it is the mother’s condemning slap across the face of the child. Blockages of this chakra may manifest as heart issues and diseases of the lungs and breasts; the most widely known dysfunction of this energy center is a heart attack. The heart chakra is also the point of union between the lower three chakras and the upper three energy centers. The lower three chakras focus on issues associated with the physical world, while the upper three energy centers—located at the throat, forehead, and the top of the head—are directed toward the spiritual realms. The heart chakra is considered “the transforming crucible through which all energy must pass when going from one world to the other.”27 Then energy from the more grounded chakras involving our day-­to-­day functioning connect with the more cerebral concerns of the upper chakras as they pass through the heart, which is the center of unconditional love.28 The heart chakra is considered the “transformer” through which all energy must pass from the physical centers to the spiritual chakras.29 The fifth chakra is located at the throat. Hermes—the divine messenger—is its archetype. Sound is the element of this energy center. The statement of the throat chakra is “I speak,” which involves finding one’s own voice.30 The goal of this energy center is clear communication and creativity. When this chakra is blocked, the individual may feel silenced or marginalized. When dancing this chakra, gentle neck rotations are often invited, as well as releasing the head gently to the front, the back, and sides. This enables us to sense into our own soma. As we become aware of holding patterns, guided breath work is often advised, along with explorations that involve creating nonverbal sounds to enable an emotional release of unexpressed feelings. Movements that involve arching and opening or contracting and closing the neck region activate this chakra. Finding one’s characteristic gestures and walk offer a way of becoming aware of one’s kinesthetic signature: the way our bodies naturally move as a physical communication of our sense of self: this is the dance of the fifth chakra. The sixth chakra is also known as the third eye and can be experienced through the imagination, intuition, and dreams, connecting us with our inner vision and intuitive insight. This is the realm of “the inward eye, which opens to an inward view of the vision of God.”31 The element is light and the expression is “I see.”32 The goal of this energy center is to perceive the gestalt, the whole picture with all its possibilities and permutations. The archetype of the third eye center is the Psychic, he or she who foresees our future. Migraines and nightmares are some of the issues that arise when this chakra is blocked and demands release. When one is dancing this chakra, fluid motions originating with the face involving a skyward focus, as well as an earthward gaze, often release held tension and invite the imagination to play. Inviting in daydreams and giving attention to night dreams are ways to honor and unlock the treasures of the sixth chakra.

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The seventh chakra holds the symbol of the thousand-­petaled lotus, where the dichotomies are united. The archetype of this chakra involves the dance of the divine couple of Hindu mythology: Shakti and Shiva. Their dance is an expression of ecstasy in motion in which the movements of the spine are fluid and free-­flowing. When you dance this chakra, move intuitively with attention to your crown. Let go of all concerns and attachments. This is the realm of divine connection and stillness, as experienced in prayer and meditation. The profound statement of this energy center is “I know.”33 “The crown chakra is the goal of our journey in life.”34

There is no end to the healing dance of the chakras. There is only continuous unfolding. This dance offers us an opportunity to focus on all the areas of our bodies as they intersect with our spine, bringing awareness and mobility to those places where we may have begun to become stiff, numb, or frozen. This is an ongoing practice: attending to somatic dreams and their physical manifestations; noticing symptoms when they arise and considering where in the chakra system they tend to form; and monitoring movement patterns by giving special attention to those areas that feel rigid or uncontained. All of this can be danced in somatic classes, or partnered with dream workers, analysts, and somatic therapists. But the question remains: how does one portray the dance of coming into wholeness? There is no end to this dance of individuation. Instead, we must consciously peel back the unconscious layers to reveal our true selves. The joys and challenges of exploring possibilities continuously await. The journey of self-­discovery is a lifelong adventure.

My work with somatic dreams and dancing the chakras has saved my life on more than one occasion. By shocking me awake, my nightmares focused my attention on issues that were eating away at my sense of self-­worth. Because the nightmares were so persistent, I sought out a Jungian analyst to help me unravel their mystery. During the same time frame, I reconnected with Sondra Fraleigh, with whom I had studied dance philosophy as an undergraduate student. By beginning my training with her at Eastwest Somatics Institute, I coordinated the psychic discoveries of my dreamwork with my somatic learning experiences, which quickened my passage through a tumultuous midlife crisis. In fact, it was at an Eastwest training workshop that Sondra echoed back to me my desire to become a dream worker. At the time, I was actually shocked to hear her words repeating my intention. As I began my graduate work in depth psychology, I felt compelled to continuously write from a somatic perspective. What unfolded for me was a psyche-­soma connection that truly spoke from a place of longing for an integrated mindbody

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Weltanschauung, or worldview. My somatic studies informed my work with dreams and archetypal psychology in my teaching and in my graduate work, ultimately involving my college dance company in my dissertation research of dancing my dreams. Dancers in our company have also worked with me on dancing archetypal research involving the Great Goddess, an interest originally stimulated by my dreams. In this way, my somatic education has been an integrating force—a touchstone—grounding my more cerebral education in depth and archetypal psychology. Together they bring me to the awareness that soma and psyche are truly one. Notes 1. Jeanne Schul-­Elkins, “Frequently Asked Questions about Dreams,” DreamNetwork Journal 23, no. 4 (2005): 21–33, 32. 2. Deldon Anne McNeely, Touching: Body Therapy and Depth Psychology (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1987), 13, 96. 3. Steven Aizenstat, Dream Tending (New Orleans: Spring Journal, 2009), 62, 63. 4. Final lines of Jeanne Schul, “Wild Wolf,” Between 11 (spring 2008): 27. 5. McNeely, Touching, 26, 42. 6. Ami Ronnberg and Kathleen Martin, eds., The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2010), 700. 7. Barry Williams quoted in Schul-­Elkins, “Frequently Asked Questions about Dreams,” 32. 8. McNeely, Touching, 86. 9. Schul-­Elkins, “Frequently Asked Questions about Dreams,” 32. 10. Tallulah Lyons, Dream Prayers: Dreamwork as a Spiritual Path (Smyrna, Ga.: Tallulah Lyons, 2002), 11. 11. Arthur Avalon, The Serpent Power: The Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga (New York: Dover, 1974), 1. 12. Arnold Bittlinger, Archetypal Chakras: Meditations and Exercises for Opening Your Chakras, trans. Christine M. Grimm (Boston: Weiser Books, 2001), xi. 13. Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Types, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1923), 448. 14. Bittlinger, Archetypal Chakras, 25. 15. Judith Harris, Jung and Yoga: The Psyche-­Body Connection (Toronto: Inner City Books, 2001), 20. 16. Bittlinger, Archetypal Chakras, 6. 17. Harris, Jung and Yoga, 136. 18. Bittlinger, Archetypal Chakras, 180. 19. Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User’s Guide to the Chakra System (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 1987), 13. 20. Jeanne M. Schul, “I Dance the Body Electric,” Somatics 4, no. 16 (2012): 4–7. 21. Harris, Jung and Yoga, 64, 103. 22. Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 59. 23. Judith, Wheels of Life, 60. 24. Ibid., 112.

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194 / je anne schul 25. Ibid., 166. 26. Ibid., 210–11. 27. Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing through the Human Energy Field (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 51. 28. Ibid. 29. Jane Hightower, Stone Empowerment: A Resource for Both the Beginner and the Adept. Martinez, Ga.: Heah Tur Genesis, 1999), 279. 30. Judith, Wheels of Life, 258–59. 31. Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays, 1959–1987 (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 1997), 214. 32. Judith, Wheels of Life, 314. 33. Ibid., 367. 34. Bittlinger, Archetypal Chakras, 180.

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chapter 12

Contact Unwinding Karin Rugman

She was standing, waiting, anticipating the soft touch; that motioned her muscles and kissed her bones. An inner widening, like the growing of her heart; a deeper sense of belonging in endless time and space. She was falling, dancing to the whisper of a song. —Keren Margetts

The study of somatics offers many layers of learning, from the simplest focusing of attention to the cultivation of a deeper sense of self. Somatic study is concerned with experiencing the self from an internal perspective, inviting students to feel, acknowledge, and respond to inner and outer sensations and to consciously participate in attending to, and taking responsibility for, themselves. Developing self-­awareness and self-­knowledge through somatic processes can allow us to find release, ease, and clarity both physically and emotionally, and can give us choice and freedom to explore new possibilities in our approach to life. Somatic learning often begins simply, with students observing how they move and respond to things. For example, in walking, they may notice that they land more on one foot than the other, which could be a result of the hips being

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Figure 29. Karin Rugman in a Depth-­ Movement Dance process at the Eastwest Somatics Tuscan Sun Retreat in Italy. Photograph © 2012 by Sondra Fraleigh.

misaligned. Self-­inquiry can be challenging at first, as students discover how their bodies have accumulated habitual patterns that may have stylized or limited their movement. Patterns of movement established long ago and forgotten about may emerge and perhaps acknowledge tension or pain. I have witnessed many students realize, for instance, that their shoulder discomfort is a consequence of simply holding tension in this area. Through self-­inquiry, individuals may begin to understand how far they have dismissed signs and signals of dis-­ease in themselves for so long. During this process of self-­exploration, hands-­on work can play a significant role in deepening awareness and in supporting change. Through my own somatic enquiry and from many years of teaching dance and somatic processes to both students and community groups, I have learned the value of using nonverbal communication through touch as a tool for teaching whole body awareness and receptivity, and I understand its significance in promoting health and well-­being. Connection and communication within ourselves, with each other and the world is at the heart of somatic learning and is an essential requirement to living well. This chapter explores the process and values of Contact Unwinding, a major practice of the Shin Somatics® method, which employs movement-­based

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teaching through touch.1 An exploration between partners, Contact Unwinding is performed in an improvisational dance context. The practice invites the inner self to instinctively express itself outwardly in a spontaneous unfolding of intuitive movement or dance. In this way, Contact Unwinding interweaves dance and somatics, connecting us intimately with our moving or dancing body. The first part of the chapter unfolds some of the key themes and principles that are employed during this practice. Key themes of Shin Somatics, such as holding presence, matching through touch, and kinesthetic correspondence, are explored alongside the principles of the process demonstrating their interrelated nature. The second part of the chapter highlights the layers of knowledge that can be gained from the process when used as a tool for teaching and learning. The educational and therapeutic aspects of Contact Unwinding are considered, exploring how knowledge is obtained through different modes of learning. In particular, this section considers how Contact Unwinding invites us to learn through experiencing, discovering, and communicating. These aspects offer some interesting challenges and rewards for teaching and learning in dance and somatic studies. The analysis of findings throughout this chapter draws on my own personal experiences as a somatic educator and as a mover and is supported Figure 30. Ruth Way and Aliki Chiotaki in a Contact Unwinding improvisation in Chania on Crete in Greece at a Shin Somatics Workshop in 2014. Photograph © 2014 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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by reflections from undergraduate dance students at Bath Spa University and students in somatic workshops. I have chosen to consider in this chapter the educational and therapeutic aspects of learning together, as I believe they are inseparable in this process. As a tool in educational settings, Contact Unwinding offers the acquisition of skills, for example in developing self-­awareness and kinesthetic sensitivity, and also establishes a philosophical understanding of the method. In addition, Contact Unwinding holds therapeutic potential as a form of expressive movement therapy. The physical and emotional aspects of the body are inextricably linked. As our life experiences unfold, they are mapped continually into our physical selves, forming our own body histories. As physical, emotional beings, we carry our memories deep within so that they can easily surface and become exposed or released when we move.2 Antonio Damasio writes eloquently on the connections between body, emotion, and consciousness from both scientific and philosophical standpoints.3 His theories support the idea that by focusing attention consciously on what feels good and easy in our movement, the emotional self will also respond. Therefore, a further dimension is added to the learning that can occur in Contact Unwinding, as students connect to the various layers of physical and emotional experiences that may emerge. After taking part in Contact Unwinding we may ask ourselves, How do I feel? What do I notice? Has anything changed in my body? Students perhaps may sense a shift in the quality of their movements or perceive a change of mood. This kind of self-­enquiry forms an important part of both understanding and knowing oneself more fully. It can offer participants an opportunity to see their physical and emotional responses more clearly. As habits are released, tensions can melt away and the body can move with a renewed sense of freedom and flow. Feelings of calm, ease, and contentment can arrive through this sense of release. When teaching this process, I am often aware of the change of atmosphere in the room on completing the task: faces are frequently more open and alive, and the space feels calmer and more relaxed. The intention of the process of Contact Unwinding is to help participants find an easy range of motion, which is both in tune with and potentially beyond daily or habitual use. In teaching undergraduate dance students, I often find that they arrive with a number of poor habits they have acquired during their early training. These may range from poor patterns of alignment to underlying muscular tensions held in the body. These patterns often go unnoticed by the students themselves until they begin their journey of experiential learning through somatic studies. Contact Unwinding can play a valuable role in helping students develop their self-­awareness and become more receptive to others. As a partner process, Contact Unwinding enables a correspondence to emerge, as partners connect and communicate with each other through their kinesthetic sensitivity. The process instills the value of experiencing connection to another

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human being with quality of care and attention, which is integral to a sense of well-­being.

The connection between the participants in Contact Unwinding relies on kinesthetic awareness, sensitivity, and responsiveness. Before focusing more explicitly on the process itself, it is important to understand the term kinesthesia. In simple terms kinesthesia is the sensory mechanism that enables us to perceive or sense motion, weight, and position of the body in relation to the external environment. We can feel where we are in space, what kind of shape our body is making, and what kind of movements we are doing through our kinesthetic sensitivity. Dancers are familiar with the term kinesthesia, as it is a fundamental part of their tool kit. Honed and heightened in their training, kinesthetic sensitivity gives students the ability to feel the sensation of moving through space with ease and the confidence to shift with speed and abandon in their performances. Motion is experienced initially through the proprioceptors, bundles of sensory receptors in the joints, muscles, and tendons, which continually feed information back through the nervous system to the brain informing us how and where we are moving. Sensory information from the vestibular system (inner ear) and the haptic system (the skin) also contribute to the overall perception of motion. The inner ear provides us with a sense of position or balance in relation to gravity, while the skin gives us a sense of the internal self in relation to the external environment.4 The combination of these sensory systems in the body directly feeds our ability to experience and respond to ourselves and the world around us. As we move in our own personal space or shared space with others or negotiate our environmental spaces, we continually use these sensory mechanisms to react and respond. This is done instinctively through the kinesthetic sensitivity and is therefore directly somatic. Our sense of motion comes from both internal and external awareness, as we connect tactilely with ourselves and the environment.5 Deane Juhan tells us that “perception is formed on the basis of movement, just as surely and completely as movement is initiated and guided by perception.”6 This inseparable connection of movement and perception and the communication that takes place as one informs the other play a key role in facilitating change in the body, as we see later in the chapter. For now it is important to acknowledge the relationship of kinesthetic sensitivity and its intersection with touch. From an early age we move to learn, touching the space around us through our whole body in order to interpret and respond to the environment. Fraleigh reminds us that our tactile-­kinesthetic sensitivity arrives long before we are born, as we are held in our mother’s womb.7 This is our first experience of touch being a nurturing, sustaining element in our lives. As we grow and develop into young adults, this tactile-­kinesthetic exchange is a tool for engaging, communicating,

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and responding spontaneously with the world around us; it is how we experience life and is the teacher of many things, both internally and externally. Used in a somatic learning context, touch and kinesthetic responsiveness provide us with essential tools for developing and deepening awareness and for connecting with each other. Tactile-­kinesthetic exchange is fundamental to Contact Unwinding. The partners share an experience of trust and receptivity as they correspond through their tactile-­kinesthetic sensitivity.

In the process of Contact Unwinding, the partners hold different roles. One partner takes a supportive role and acts as a guide, with the initial intention of finding an easy range of motion for their partner. The purpose here is for the guide to assist the mover in their explorations, rather than to force or insert their own intentions. A listening touch is used to initiate a movement response from the mover. The manner of touch is important, as this opens the door of receptivity for the moving partner. Too firm a touch can become intrusive for the mover, while too light a touch can be unheard or unyielding. A skillful listening touch taps into the kinesthetic sensitivity of the mover and can enable a fuller exploration and expression of movement to take place. The focus of finding ease and comfort for the mover is then infused with the potential of finding new possibilities in their motion. The mover’s role is as an active participant. Their intention is to listen and respond to the sensory information being offered, allowing their movement to unfold spontaneously. This intersection between the partners relies on listening and responding to each other through the intricacy of their kinesthetic intelligence.8 Contact Unwinding differs from Contact Improvisation, where the roles of the partners are equal or parallel and where both partners in this process act as movers, giving and taking weight in a spontaneous and sometimes explosive dance. Both processes involve listening at their core. However, Contact Unwinding is a more subtle engagement using attuned listening, which employs specific touch techniques that are learned in somatic bodywork. One student noted, “To begin with I found it difficult to allow my body to listen to my partner’s guiding, but after a while it seemed to flow smoothly.”9 This example reveals how connectivity, awareness, and responsiveness can be improved through attuned listening and reflects the valuable learning that can take place in the exchange.

In Contact Unwinding, movement can be initiated anywhere on the body, depending where support might be needed. Where and how to connect with your partner can stimulate movement responses that may lead the mover away from familiar patterns, perhaps letting go of some of their dominant pathways.

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For example, if the mover is moving primarily from the upper body, the guide might choose to place hands on the mover’s knees to encourage more sensory awareness and movement impulse from the lower body. In addition to initiation, there is also a focus on phrasing the movement with flow and stillness. The phrased movement exchange between the participants allows them both time to listen and can offer more potential in initiating new movement possibilities. Moving slowly and allowing stillness enables the mover to have time to discover new spaces to move into, rather than falling into habitual patterns of behavior. A first-­year undergraduate dance student commented, “I found I was freer within my movements and there were more movements I could play with, rather than feeling restricted.”10 It is often in stillness that the body lets go of habitual use and anticipation, freeing or releasing an opening for something new. Pauses can also allow the guide to release the need to make something happen, instilling the sense of patience in allowing, rather than forcing a movement response. When teaching this process, I often ask participants to slow down, emphasizing the speed through repetition. Going slower than you expect to can help concentrate the attention even more and invites participants to really engage with their kinesthetic sensitivity. One student noted that moving slowly in this process enabled her to experience powerful sensory information. As her sensory systems became more heightened, she moved with exquisite attention.11 Another student reported that even in the stillness there was still a strong connection to her partner and that the dance was still very much alive.12 Both these examples suggest that phrasing can play an important role in enabling students to tap into their own sensitivity, as well as developing a heightened sense of connection with each other.

Experienced somatic movers may become playful and fast moving in Contact Unwinding, adding a different energy and feel to the correspondence taking place. This can feel free and liberating. Dancers in particular often respond automatically and can be carried away by the flow and energy of their response, using movement that they inhabit. Patterns of response become familiar in our body through repetition and become automatically engrained in our system as unconscious reaction. Moving quickly inevitably forces us into autopilot. For dancers it is good to have this feeling of moving in familiar territory. However, in Contact Unwinding, students sometimes comment on feeling stuck in the same movement. Moving quickly may reinforce good habitual patterns, but it can also encourage patterns to become more entrenched, which blocks the potential for exploring new possibilities. Moving spontaneously without conscious attention can also reinforce poor patterns of movement response. Often we are unaware of these responses until they are bought to our conscious attention.

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Contact Unwinding allows for a mindful response, one that enables us to have the choice to change our habits or explore alternative patterns by listening to new information.

Inexperienced students in Contact Unwinding may attempt to forcefully steer their partners into movement when guiding, not fully understanding the intention of allowing the mover to respond spontaneously. There is a respect learned here, as students discover the importance of listening with patience and mindfulness. They learn to wait and allow a response to unfold, rather than force an outcome. The process here echoes the Alexander Technique, where the “means whereby” or the execution of the movement is central to accessing change.13 As the guide in Contact Unwinding considers how they might facilitate change through their connection without imposing their own intentions, they are also supporting their partner in focusing their attention on the journey of movement that is unfolding. Being more attentive to the needs of their partner, the guide can learn to skillfully and compassionately provide opportunities to invite their partner into unfamiliar territory. As students begin to develop an awareness of themselves as both guide and mover, they activate and heighten their sensory systems through these roles. They develop their understanding of what it means to listen with their whole selves, responding patiently and mindfully to the subtle connection that is taking place as they correspond in this movement conversation. During an undergraduate Contact Unwinding session, one couple commented on the strong connection that they felt in the process and delighted in the feeling of moving together as if in a duet.14 This observation highlights the open and harmonious connection between the participants as a result of listening and moving together in full awareness. It is the kinesthetic correspondence that enables this fluid connection, allowing the participants to move together in a flow of open responsiveness. Being patient and mindful in the process imbues a flavor of compassion and care, resulting in reciprocal benefit.

In Contact Unwinding, partners are required to be fully engaged and connect with each other with present-­centered attention. Being present-­centered and holding presence are key themes in the practice of Shin Somatics, which has its roots in phenomenology, the philosophical investigation of conscious experience.15 To be consciously in the moment of moving allows us to tap into a wealth of sensations, enabling us to participate directly with our experience of ourselves. To be present-­centered in Shin Somatics requires participants to focus attention in a neutral way, without judgment, expectation, or necessity of any particular outcome. Fraleigh draws on the idea of the beginner’s mind in her work, stemming from her experiences with the Japanese practice of butoh.16 She explains

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how being in a place of not knowing allows us to discover things openly without expectations, an empty canvas so to speak. Being present-­centered, students can wait for their responses in an open and honest place, without anticipating the results. Present-­centered attention has a three-­dimensional quality. To be centered in length, width, and depth enables us to be present and open to all possibilities. It is challenging to understand and learn this skill, as humans are easily distracted and often become fixated on goals, rather than focusing on the activity itself. In order to instill the qualities that are needed for being present-­centered and to help focus, I have found simple sitting meditation useful. Meditation can allow us to find a center, feel directional energies, and link us to the external environment. It can train the mindful body to be calm, receptive, and open and can make us feel whole. Jon Kabat-­Zinn states that “when we are in touch with being whole, we feel at one with everything. When we feel at one with everything, we feel whole ourselves.”17 Having a sense of wholeness, both from an inner and outer perspective, puts us in a good place for holding presence for our Selves and each other. It is an interesting prospect to have no expectation or anticipation in our response to something, especially for dancers who are used to controlling their movements. They are faced with a curious dilemma as they grapple with the idea that the body can dance itself, in an improvisational, responsive mode. There is an element of trust here that requires participants to let go of the habit of expecting things to happen or to be a particular way. One student reported, “I felt a little like a sense of control had been taken, interestingly this left me feeling relaxed and open to whatever movement was to emerge, rather than trying to think and control what the next move might or should be.”18 With practice, students learn the significance of having no expectations and find freedom to respond openly and honestly. My undergraduate dance students delight in this liberty. There is often an air of excitement, since the spontaneous dance that arrives in Contact Unwinding is full of new movement possibilities, having released familiar pathways. Behavior and habit are brought into consciousness through focusing on the moment of moving in a present-­centered way. As participants develop their sensory skills, they become more awake in their conscious experience. To be consciously aware and openly active in Contact Unwinding allows us to be more receptive and open to change. I am often reminded of my own habits in this process, but I am equally able to embrace the opportunities that emerge for new movement and sensitivity. I am able to let go of my inhibitions and not be guarded by the same old patterns from my dancing past, giving me a sense of freedom and pleasure in moving naturally from an uncluttered place.

Contact Unwinding also requires the guiding partner to hold presence, or hold the space for the mover. In holding the space, the guide gives full attention to the

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unfolding movement, keeping the mover safe from interference and respecting their individuality. It is essential that the holding of the space be performed in a non-­judgmental way with a quality of care and attention that is a fundamental part of this process. Holding presence in this way has similarities to witnessing in Authentic Movement Practice or Movement in Depth, the original work of Mary Whitehouse. Janet Adler explains how a witness engages with the art of seeing from within, experiencing the mover with a particular quality of attention, rather than seeing what they need.19 In Contact Unwinding, the guide is holding presence for the mover as well as interacting with them in the process. Their attention is given to their partner in a whole-bodied way to enable a communicative and responsive relationship to unfold, while also holding a neutral, non-­judgmental space for them. The quality of this attention and attitude to the other person being present-­centered gives the whole process a therapeutic effect and reflects the manner of communication that is taking place. Through this skill, students learn to take physical and emotional responsibility, for themselves and their partners.

Matching through touch is linked directly to the concept of holding presence. It is another key theme in the practice of Shin Somatics that relates to the idea of moving together, in relation to and in harmony with a partner. Fraleigh tells us matching is “a somatic strategy that relieves us of our compulsion to move, think, and relate competitively.” Humans can be instinctively competitive due to their cultural heritage, and a competitive impulse can be nurtured through training. For dancers, the idea of being non-­judgmental and noncompetitive can be challenging, since the rigors of training and styles of teaching, although essential for developing skills and repertoire in dance, can also encourage students to be highly self-­critical. Letting go of the heavy burden of perfection is sometimes what students need to learn, in order to weave between expertise and quality of attention. Fraleigh considers how mastery can be supplemented with matching and refers to matching as a quality of alertness and care, which focuses on means and not on ends.20 To match someone utilizes kinesthetic awareness, sensitivity, and response as we connect with a listening touch through our whole body. In order for dance students to develop their skills in matching, they need to tap into their sensory mechanisms, as well as becoming skillful technicians. When matching in Contact Unwinding, themes of carrying and being carried in movement emerge. The guide facilitates, carries, and confirms the mover, in essence supporting their partner as they move. The mover is invited to respond openly and instinctively, allowing themselves to be carried toward new possibilities of motion. The guide also becomes more self-­aware through matching, as their attention opens to their own body’s organization as well as their recipient’s. The union between the participants is both supportive and uniting. They

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both learn what it means to be fully present and responsive in the moment of exchange. In matching, the experience is embodied in a whole-person way, offering participants a place to meet each other with integrity and openness. The guide begins where their partner begins, broadly adopting the same kind of form as their partner, corresponding to or complementing their movements. When participants are fully engaged and attentive in this way, they create a harmonious bond between their bodies as they move in relation to each other. One couple described their exchange as having a sense of being merged together, a feeling of being one body.21 This sense of feeling connected and merged is a common experience in matching and reflects the rich kinesthetic correspondence that is taking place in this nonverbal exchange. I have experienced a sense of grounding through matching as my body acknowledges a sense of security through my partner’s guidance. Grounding is not necessarily achieved through Contact Unwinding, but is a possible consequence. What it perhaps suggests is the potential to communicate stability through matching. When I see matching done well, I am struck by the beauty of the conversation that takes place as the partners move together in a dance of unity, empathy, and acceptance. The non-­judgmental and noncompetitive qualities of matching play an important role in student learning in a world where expectations are forced upon them as a matter of course and there is little room for quiet listening and contemplation.

The vital element of Contact Unwinding is the tactile-­kinesthetic exchange that takes place. This enables each partner to correspond to the other through a continuum of sensory information. A flurry of feeling, emotion, image, and meaning is given and received. As the participants consciously engage with the subtleties of these sensations, the possibility of releasing or rescuing some fragment of meaning or feeling is apparent. Stories begin to emerge spontaneously from these short movement explorations. As kinesthetic information reveals itself in our awareness, self-­perception can become clearer and change. Students in Contact Unwinding may simply be struck by the experiences of their motion, a sensation of flow in their movement, for instance. I often experience clarity in my body as my partner reinforces through their touch the sense of where I am moving from and where I am going. These communications can focus on our bodily experience of how and where we are moving, acknowledging the kinesthetic sensitivity at work. Students may also experience images that are fed by the correspondence with their partners. Image and imagination can be released in the process as the emotional self responds to the connection. Imagination can help participants escape their habitual selves and gain a sense of freedom. One of my undergraduate dance students wrote, “I forgot where I was in the room. It seemed that I had connected to something deep down, a light spreading from my abdomen

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and through into my limbs. This light was the thing that was guiding me and leading me.”22 This experience was very real for this student. The image helped her access a freedom of expression. Each personal experience offers some kind of learning, whether it is a physical sensation, for example, moving consciously from the base of your spine for the first time, or an emotional experience like feeling open and energized. These nonverbal exchanges allow participants to listen and respond with quiet sensitivity and respect for each other. As students engage in kinesthetic correspondence, they can learn so much from the movement conversations that emerge and can welcome the opportunity to reconnect, reaffirm, transform, and change themselves.

In teaching Contact Unwinding, I ask participants to share a brief verbal exchange immediately after the activity. Here students discuss both as mover and facilitator how they felt, what they noticed, and they ask themselves if anything has changed. These exchanges can be rich and vibrant as participants share their experiences and listen to each other’s expressions. The opportunity to verbalize the experience helps students to establish the learning that has taken place. Many students for example, notice how connected they feel to the movement and comment on feeling released from the tensions of the day after the activity. When sharing the experience in this way it is important to remember the principles of being present-­centered, non-­judgmental, and neutral, so not to impose our own preconceptions. These values also help students to improve their ability to listen to each other, as they embrace the importance of when to be silent and when to respond. The manner of the verbal exchange reflects the learning that takes place in Contact Unwinding. For example, listening to a partner’s touch or waiting for a movement response can teach students the importance of good communication. Contact Unwinding, therefore, not only provides a rich kinesthetic exchange between participants, but can also offer a wider range of informative learning.

Another element I include in my teaching practice is journal writing. The verbal exchange allows students to respond in the immediacy of their experience. Journal writing, however, extends the process of learning by encouraging students to reflect on what took place. They are encouraged to write experientially, capturing on paper some of their personal experiences. Then they are able to extract their own learning from seeing the experience that lands on the page. One student wrote the following during the second approximation of a Contact Unwinding session: “The connection was even stronger, like a bolt going through my body in certain places, especially when she placed her hand on my upper chest. I felt an emotional connection with that place and after she took her hand away an even

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greater relief. After this exercise, my whole body felt relaxed and when I started to walk I felt energized and alert. I also felt much happier after as a lot of tension was released from my mind and my body.”23 The student is making sense of her experience here and clearly acknowledges the physical and emotional response that she received. Journal writing allows the learning that is taking place to be consolidated even further.

In the unfolding of the Contact Unwinding process, the skills being utilized are evident in the form. To summarize the learning that takes place in the process, three aspects are important: experiencing, discovering, and communicating. The first aspect focuses on experiential learning. This simply means to learn through experiencing or doing something in a whole-­body way. To personally experience something gives us knowledge, both in our mental understanding as well as bodily. When listening skills are developed in somatic work, a wealth of sensory information is received that stems from our proprioceptive mechanisms. This information provides us with an opportunity to become more aware and in tune with our own bodies. We become more conscious of our own unique body-­story. As students learn to listen, feel, and respond to these sensations, they have the potential to unpick, release, rewind, reestablish, and reinvent old and new stories in a constructive way. As Contact Unwinding utilizes the kinesthetic sensitivity, it enables participants to engage with their senses and live in the moment of experience. From this engagement they make somatic sense of their own bodies and are able to consciously connect to their own body learning. This consciousness allows them to be an active participant in the process rather than a passive recipient.24 Students acknowledge the authority of the body as a thinking, feeling unit in this process. They begin to trust the wisdom of their own bodies, listening and responding to their own needs. This moves them beyond the constraints of habit and expectation and into the realms of self-­responsibility and self-­authority. The impact of this experiential learning resonates both physically and emotionally. As emotional and physical tensions are released, a sense of renewal and confidence arrives, as the mover finds an easy, comfortable assurance in the body. The student becomes more confident and empowered. Here we see both the educational and therapeutic learning aspects that emerge and connect in Contact Unwinding as physical and emotional values are recognized. In addition, the learning extends its reaches out to the wider community and environment, as we connect with our selves and each other, and with the world around us. As Fraleigh explains, “Contact unwinding often elicits my connection to a larger whole. My breathing improves through this experience in spontaneous partnering. When I pay attention to it, my vision also improves. My consciousness of my surroundings and of others is amplified in cognitive terms, and I see

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something that never occurred to me before.”25 This description reflects the potential in Contact Unwinding to experience the inner and outer layers of our existence. Perception is improved and developed through consciously experiencing ourselves, giving us a sense of self, which has more clarity and wholeness. Participants also experience a sense of place and community through their connection. Contact Unwinding clearly gives us the tools for learning experientially, inviting us to develop a deeper and more genuine sense of ourselves in the world. The second aspect focuses on learning through discovery. Although closely related to the idea of experiencing, discovery in this context simply means to uncover, find, or recognize opportunities. Contact Unwinding invites us to investigate new possibilities through movement explorations and encourages participants to let go of preconceptions, habit, and ego. As students begin to engage with their kinesthetic sensitivity, they develop a more authentic sense of themselves and are then in a position to begin exploring with a sense of openness and freedom. Being more receptive in their response to movement possibilities, students soon realize that they have choice in how they want to move. They can discover new potentials in their own repertoire. Each time I experience this process, I enjoy the spontaneity of what I might find. Each partner offers something different, the conversation is never the same, but I am kept on my toes. I am forced to live in the moment of spontaneity and to trust what emerges. This is clearly useful to me in the wider context of my life, as I attempt to negotiate what lands in my path. Learning through discovery and being able to choose without expectation of consequence offers freedom and authenticity in the intuitive dance that emerges in Contact Unwinding. This type of engagement releases students from the restrictions of learning in a more formal way. The nature of this open exploration promotes creativity, as new pathways of movement are mapped in the body in the exchange. As students unlock both physical and emotional habits and play with new information, they embody new expression and can find a renewed sense of creativity. There is a sense of ownership for the participants, as fresh movement is embedded and playfully explored. The final aspect of learning in Contact Unwinding focuses on communication. This chapter has highlighted how information is communicated through kinesthetic exchange and verbal dialogue. Through the kinesthetic correspondence in Contact Unwinding, students learn to listen and respond with quality of attention and compassion. Through the themes of matching and present-­centered attention, they learn to meet others where they are and discover the importance of being non-­judgmental. Here students learn about themselves as communicators and how to communicate in different ways. They learn about patience in waiting for a response and clarity in moving from a particular place. They learn how to offer reassurance through their hands, as well as how to be bold in their decisions to move into a new space. Students can learn the importance of communicating trust in Contact Unwinding as they give and receive support through their

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connection. This can often be a challenging lesson for participants as they learn how they feel in each of the roles of giving and receiving. As a mother, I find myself slipping easily into the supporting role, initially finding it much harder to be supported by my partner. Communicating a sense of reassurance and trust in Contact Unwinding helps the partners to find the support they need to move well or to guide someone with certainty. As I watch my students learning this process, I often see them face their demons, not wanting to relinquish control of themselves to another or not trusting their own responses. As the correspondence between the partners heightens, the dialogue can become richer and more productive. Confidence grows and students increase their connections to each other and to the movement spaces. Perception is increased and impacts on the students’ ability to remain in the movement conversation with assurance. The verbal communication that takes place after the session allows the participants to consolidate their learning. Talking about their experience, students may share how they felt in the movement, what worked for them, where they perhaps got stuck. They may express a connection to what is happening for them in their present lives. Other times students may just share the sense of fun, freedom, or pleasure they gained from the correspondence. In this shared experience, there is much to gain from the communication that takes place. Contact Unwinding allows us to engage with others with quality of attention and support. It is a valuable tool in helping students to gain self-­knowledge, confidence, creativity, and connection through supported self-­enquiry. These attributes are clearly visible through the following journal entry demonstrating the potential for self-­learning in this process: She was shaking in her knees and you steadied her. She was falling forwards and you caught her, holding her feet firm to the ground. Her muscles were seizing with tension your calmness surrounded her. Her body was tight with anxiety and your touch softened her with the warmth of your gentle hands. She felt she could not move every step you encouraged her. Her head was held low and you lifted her eyes to see that she was beautiful, confident and free.26 —Keren Margetts

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This chapter includes many of my own observations of teaching and learning as both a somatic educator and as a mover myself. Through somatic education, in particular the practice of Shin Somatics, I have found the skin I am comfortable in. I have learned the importance of moving with ease and comfort and how this impacts on our physical and emotional well-being. My teaching of movement has evolved as I have released the need to push my body beyond it’s comfort zone as a dancer and have embraced the ideas of experiencing what is alive in the moment of moving. Beauty, joy, and creativity live in the simplicity of moving freely. This is now at the heart of my teaching. To move is to live with fluidity, heartbeat, and melody. In moving somatically we stay connected to our sense of self and keep exploration, discovery, and expression alive. Whether we are a young student, in middle age, or entering our golden years, we need to be connected to ourselves, to each other, and with the world around us in order to feel well and happy. Notes The chapter epigraph is from Keren Margetts, Somatics Journal, entry December 9, 2012, Bath Spa University. 1. For further definition of Contact Unwinding, see the glossary. 2. Todd was one of the earliest writers to acknowledge the inseparable connection of the emotional and physical self. See Mabel Todd, “Function and Form in Human Dynamics,” chapter 1 in The Thinking Body, 2nd ed. (London: Dance Books, 1997), 1–24. 3. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). 4. For a more in-­depth explanation of kinesthesia, see Julie A. Brodie and Elin E. Lobel, “Kinesthesia: The Sixth Sense for Dancers,” chapter 3 in Dance and Somatics: Mind-­Body Principles of Teaching and Performance (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012), 61–81. 5. Deane Juhan, Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork, 3rd ed. (Barrytown, N.Y.: ­Barrytown/Station Hill Press, 2003), 186. 6. Ibid., 187. 7. Sondra Fraleigh, Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 127. 8. See Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 217–49. 9. Abbey Roberts, Somatics Journal, entry November 20, 2012, Bath Spa University. 10. Harriet Mugford, Somatics Journal, entry March 11, 2013, Bath Spa University. 11. Karin Rugman, Class Observations and Discussion Notes, October 7, 2012, Bath Spa University. 12. Abi Roy, Somatics Journal, entry January 23, 2013, Bath Spa University. 13. For more information on the fundamentals of the Alexander Technique see Glen Park, The Art of Changing: Exploring the Alexander Technique and Its Relationship to the ­Human Energy Body (London: Ashgrove, 2000). 14. Rugman, Class Observations and Discussion Notes. 15. Fraleigh’s early writing broke ground on the philosophy of phenomenology and dance consciousness. See Sondra Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987).

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12. contac t unwinding / 211 16. Sondra Fraleigh, Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 141. 17. Jon Kabat-­Zinn, “In The Spirit of Mindfulness: Wholeness and Oneness” chapter 3 in Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 226. 18. Roy, Somatics Journal. 19. See Linda Hartley, Somatic Psychology: Body, Mind and Meaning (London: Whurr, 2004), 64–65. 20. Fraleigh, Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion, 122, 124. 21. Rugman, Class Observations and Discussion Notes. 22. Vicky Hearne, Somatics Journal, entry February 7, 2013, Bath Spa University. 23. Amy Osbourne, Somatics Journal, entry October 11, 2011, Bath Spa University. 24. Hanna describes sensing as “not passively receptive, but actively productive, ­involving the entire somatic process.” See Thomas Hanna, “What Is Somatics?,” in Bone, Breath, and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, ed. Don Hanlon Johnson, 341–52 (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 345. 25. Sondra Fraleigh, email exchange with author, August 29, 2012. 26. Keren Margetts, Somatics Journal, entry February 21, 2013, Bath Spa University.

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Dance Maps A Guide for Dance Experiences

Introduction Remember Soma Submerged in the marvel of breath and movement, soma is our tacit body of nature and primordial dance. Soma is not the body we see, but the body we experience. Thus to test experience, we can trace our somatic tendencies through dance. We become the dance and its record, viable in psychology of form and perception. We cultivate consciousness and memory in the ways we move, registering correlative emotional attunements. We absolutely cannot escape the affectation of our movements and emotional life. Like all organisms in nature, we are somatically alive in the mind of our motion. Dance is special in this regard because we do it deliberately, even when we improvise or accept occurrence of accident. We decide to dance, and then we can notice the expressions and emotions that arrive. Suddenly, we know something or feel something curious and new.

Performers All To be awake and concentrated in the moment—this is the somatic essence of performance. In this light we offer Dance Maps as performance templates for the studio—and for natural and architected environments. They are intended for those who want to claim the dancer within, from the professional dancer to the beginner. Each person starts from where they are in improvised performances

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Figure 31. Shin Somatics Workshop and Conference, Archetypes of Transformation 12/12/12. Sondra Fraleigh teaches in the workshop at Red Hills Wellness Center in St. George, Utah, with conference in Zion. Photograph © 2012 by Richard Biehl.

that anyone can do. Performance is unpredictable, and therefore, exciting. Risk inheres in the soma of performance. If we never risk, we don’t learn or change. It is not enough to keep learning private; it needs to be shared and confirmed. Presentation and performance is important in the cycle of learning and healing. This is a major theme of our book. When we present (or become present) through movement and dance, we become more alive to others and ourselves. When we are aware in an act of performance, we have the potential to experience ourselves both within and beyond an ordinary sense of reality, especially through the use and development of imagination. Empathic connections multiply when we dance in a group improvisation. Practice in performance is valuable for everyone, not just those who will become professional performers. When you interview for a job, for instance, you are being watched and evaluated on your performance. While most of us don’t like to think much about it, we are, nevertheless, often observed by others. We can be bothered by observation, or we can just breathe easily and not take it personally. Approach the following Dance Maps for individual and community performance in light of their practical, imagistic, and empathic values; give yourself a chance to learn, and to heal. The dances that emerge have their own beauty and validity for the time being. They expand awareness of movement and dance, also relationships of self and other as part of outdoor and natural environments. We hold with Buddhism that everything has its own nature, and that we are also part of the “everything” that nature is. There is difference and multiplicity in the oneness. That is the essence of Shin. Humans are not above

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nature. This view does not disregard the body’s assimilation of culture, ways of moving and dancing—manners of dressing, eating, and behaving. Our body is both natural and cultural, and dance is part of both. Regarding the camera: Use the following explorations to expand your awareness of performance. Keep a journal of your experiences; take photographs as witness to them, and step aside sometimes to film the dance of others. Their lens will find you also. I like to think of dances as permeable from the outside. Our Dance Maps are for solos and groups—with or without an audience. To expand the techne (the know-­how and emergence) of these dances, introduce photography and film as part of the process. You may want to eventually pour the result through digital media in order to become aware of effects, or even to expand them—not divorcing the primordial from the technological, nor the improvisational from the compositional, but engaging the interplay. I filmed several group dances I had mapped for outdoor spaces. Subsequently, I set the dances to some of my music compositions, and posted them online. They are records of somatic dance experiences. The camera is not necessary to performance, of course. Plan how you will use it if you introduce it into a Dance Map, and make it part of the witnessing. In figure 32, professional photographer Rames Xelhuantzi photographs Ashley Meeder in an environmental dance. Figure 32. Eastwest graduate Ashley Meeder in her “Dance for Georgia O’Keeffe,” witnessed by the camera of Rames Xelhuantzi. Photograph © 2009 by Rames Xelhuantzi.

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“Be a Stone”: Mapped by Sondra There is really just one essential instruction for the dance—be a stone. This instruction is taken from my mentor, the great butohist Ohno Kazuo, who often gave this singular instruction to spark improvisation, and danced from this perspective himself. When he danced for healing in Auschwitz, he could not dance, he said, until he saw the pain in the stones. This version of “Be a Stone” begins with word pepper. Say the words aloud, and let sounds fall like stones—where they may. Use the words imagistically to get going, and then morph into the simple solo MAP below. You might eventually perform it as a community experience with others, with or without an audience. There are instructions for a community of dancers also.

Scratch

Ash

Chin Mix Darken

Hesitate Refract

Withdraw (Another Word for Stone)

Tessellate

Breathe

Sprout

Solo Structure 1. Find a stone in the environment—anywhere. 2. Take a while to connect with your stone through the senses. 3. Let yourself be carried into movement through awareness of stone. 4. Be the stone or stones of your awareness as you dance. 5. If images from word pepper return, let them mix and morph with your dance.

Community Structure 1. Before you start the group process, read the preparation below to understand the whole. First follow solo instructions above, and then those below. 2. Return to the group in about 20 minutes. 3. Take the group to your stone and share your dance. 4. Each dancer leads the way to his or her stone.

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5. Visit the dances of everyone in the group. 6. Walk in silence as you go from place to place to witness the dances.

Preparation for the Community Dance 1. To find an order for the whole, or progression from dance to dance, constitute a performance circle before you begin. 2. Look over your left shoulder to see whom you will follow. Decide which person in the group will start the whole dance. 3. Improvise community word pepper aloud with words that come spontaneously from the group. Keep this short and sweet. Throw the words away on a breeze, so you can forget them, and then proceed in silence.

Begin with Walking 1. Begin the entire process as a group in a Slow Motion, Silent Walking Meditation. Before you start, a facilitator can suggest a common hand position or gesture for the group, perhaps with the palms up to suggest receptivity. 2. Then fan out from the meditation after about five minutes, as people move away from the group to find their stone.

The beginning meditation aids the element of silence. Keep silence after you determine the order of the dances from the preparation above.

Timing To determine the order of dances, the circle needs to include talking, as people come to understand the whole process and constitute its flow. A facilitator can help with this. Then the performance as a whole can proceed without talk, which brings attention to sounds in the environment. As part of this preparation, decide how long everyone will remain with their stone before returning to the group. Designate about 20 minutes, but this might vary with individual circumstances.

Audience Option After moving through the whole process, invite an audience to witness your dances and designate a guide to show the way to each dance. The guide might carry a stone—or at dusk, a lantern.

Eastwest Retreat On a farm in Wales, our group of twelve peppered the chilly air with words, and then fell silent. We performed the slow walking meditation, leaving to find our rocks, and after 20 minutes returned to the group. Finally, we visited the whole dance in silence, witnessing the place and dance of each performer on the large farm—the dances in tall grassy fields, near streams, in rivers, and sitting by still water troughs. Some dancers explored stones along the road. My stone was submerged in water, with reflections of hills covering it. Karen’s was in mud. Meredith’s had been crushed by a tractor. Sri’s was in her shoe. Jane’s was on a

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dirt road, and Tina’s was in the river. She took off her clothes and lay down in the cold water, eventually coming up with her stone while we held her clothes. She dressed ritually as we handed each item of clothing to her. The nudity, cold, and dampness became part of the somatic sensibility of her dance and our witnessing.

Speaking Bodies—Back-­to-­Back: Mapped by Catherine 1. Choose a partner. 2. Begin by sitting comfortably back-­to-­back on the floor of the studio or outdoors. 3. Relax, close your eyes, and breathe. Tune in to each other’s breath. Take your time. 4. Bring your attention to your partner’s back against yours. Use your senses to explore the feeling, shape, temperature, size, anatomical landmarks, and textures. 5. Discover what you can about your partner through this investigation. 6. Staying attached, begin to have a back-­to-­back conversation. 7. Enjoy both listening and speaking through your back.

Figure 33. Back-­to-­Back exploration for Catherine Schaeffer’s “Motional Baggage,” performed in New York’s Central Park, at Valdosta State University, and at the American College Dance Festival, Florida State University, 2011. Dancers are Nicole Summerlin and Ciera Johnson. Photograph © 2011 by Catherine Schaeffer.

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Explore the Options Once you get into the flow of this, there are many options. You may take turns telling a specific story to your partner through your back. Another possibility is to evolve from this beginning into a contact dance of weight sharing, rolling, traveling, and changing levels. Staying connected is the goal. A good ending place is to return to the original back-­to-­back orientation sitting with your partner and breathing.

Engage a Witness Afterward, talk with your partner about anything you would like to share from this experience. What did you learn about your partner? Did you create or comprehend a story? What did the witness perceive in observing this connected relationship?

Ecodances: Mapped by Ali We can practice focused attention and ecological perception during our dance making, in the somatic classroom or out in the natural environment, as I explain in chapter 10, and offer in the following explorations.

Walking and Writing Meditation Walk in varied environments and at different times. Tune into internal thoughts, external shapes and forms, patterns, sounds. Pause periodically to record these multilayered thoughts, observations, and reflections. Notice the somatic sensation of walking over different surfaces as you take in the shapes and textures around you.

Framing 1. Identify a small section of beach, or any other terrain, and draw a line around this collection of naturally occurring objects with a stick. The exploration is designed to use all of your natural and learned aesthetic discernment to identify “ready-­made” artwork. 2. Create a small danced response inspired by the natural “frame” (the shape or horizon) of the surrounding environment.

Turning and Naming 1. Stand in an open space outdoors. Begin to turn very slowly while chanting everything you see: tree, sky, blue, bird, gull, rock, etc. Increase your speed until finally you find yourself refining the things named down to five or so items. Keep turning slowly, but use these words to inspire a moving dance. 2. Stand back-­to-­back with a partner. Begin to spin, but this time alternate calling out words for what you see. Increase speed in same way as above,

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then work together to blend the shape-­action dances that may move from the spot and continue as a kind of wordless partner improvisation until you both find an ending together.

Nine Easy Pieces 1. Choreographing marks: Improvise a short foot dance that leaves a pattern in the sand or dirt. Invite another dancer to choreograph a dance using your marks as their score. 2. Responding to the land’s shape: Singly or as a group, use the loom of the land as the score for your dance. 3. Walking in each other’s footsteps: Form a line or just pairs and stride so that you try to fit your feet into the footsteps of the other person or persons. Or, simply do this with random footprints you find in the sand. 4. Walking leaving no trace on wet sand: Practice walking on the planet and leaving no footprint on damp sand at the beach. Stay close to the wash of the ocean. 5. Building identity sculptures: Construct sculptures with found objects along the water’s edge, then, having shared their meaning with the group, watch the sea wash them away. 6. Blindfolded guided discovery in pairs: Guide blindfolded partner around the landscape by holding their wrist and placing your other hand on their

Figure 34. Choreographing marks: Wind-­made and human-­made patterns. Photograph courtesy of Alison (Ali) East.

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back. Direct their hand toward the environment—to feel the textures and shapes of as many different objects and shapes as possible. Swap roles. 7. Lying as sea lions: No-­mind—just attending to the moment, sounds, breeze, etc. 8. Matching the rhythm of waves: As a connected line of dancers at the water’s edge, match the rhythm of the waves. 9. Lying as sediment in rock: Gradually, over time, dancers make four or five shifts that reveal themselves as actions joined as a single phrase or remaining as separate isolated forms throughout the room.

“Be Spinach and Stone Butoh”: Mapped by Sondra 1. Set your camera somewhere in the environment where you know you can find it easily in order to step outside the performance sometimes and witness with photographs and video. 2. Lie down on a large rock of your choice (or in a rocky or grassy landscape) and cover your eyes with spinach leaves. Open your eyes and remain there until you feel like moving. Through the leaves, you may see a wonderful emerald-­green color if you are facing the sun—spines, cells, and more, as the light streams through. 3. Move out into the environment (for about 45 minutes) while enjoying the sensation of bonding with it. (In Snow Canyon, Utah, we bond with the soft-­skin, coral-­colored sandstone.) 4. If you encounter others on your way, make a choice to move with them, or remain apart. 5. Don’t forget to witness the dances of others with photographs and video. 6. When you are finished, return to the starting point and wait for the others to return. Figure 35. Eastwest graduate Norianna Diesel Potts in “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh,” in Snow Canyon, Utah. Photograph © 2012 by Sondra Fraleigh.

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7. In words, share your dance experience of the environment and the day if you want to. It is also fine to just listen. 8. Take about 15 minutes for verbal witnessing of self and responding to others. 9. Make sure you have everyone’s email addresses so you can share photographs and video.

Memory: Mapped by Kelly This memory-­based transformational Dance Map takes students on a journey to their past. It bridges the past to a present and seeks to invite nonverbal dialogue as the reflection. The total lesson unfolds in an hour. The facilitator may choose to incorporate a guiding quote. An example follows. If you keep your body empty then everything can be revealed. If you fix it and fill it with one thing everything will stop there. So, when it’s empty, the very firm, very strong and very delicate, very tender—can come out all together. (Butoh artist Ohno Yoshito) 1. Find a position on the floor that is comfortable. Allow yourself to sink into the natural rhythm of your breath. 2. Let a childhood memory float into your consciousness. As you discover this memory, connect to your senses. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What taste does your memory have? What is your sense of touch? What kinesthetic sense do you have? 3. Can your memory become a dance? The dance may begin in your mind’s eye. Allow it to connect more deeply to your kinesthetic sense. Let your memory unwind through movement. The movement may be minute or expansive. This is your memory and your dance. 4. When your dance is complete, draw your experience. 5. Without verbal exchange, share your drawing with a partner. 6. Witness as your partner dances your drawing, and vice versa.

This experience can be adapted to many environments and abilities as the dance unfolds within each person’s movement range, and it can also begin seated in a chair. As a solo experience, the drawing can lead to a handwritten journal reflection instead of sharing a dance with a partner.

Tides: Mapped by Robert This movement meditation can be done as a solo or in a group, and it takes from 15 to 45 minutes. Its intention is to evoke, within body and imagination, a feeling of the sea—especially its aliveness—and to use this feeling as a guide for improvising movement. The text below can be used directly, or, if preferred, you

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can develop a personalized movement score (see Variation below). This meditation can be done with eyes closed or eyes open with a soft focus. 1. Begin lying on back or side. Allow your body to settle. Feel the ground underneath soften as it receives your weight. 2. Bring awareness to your breath; feel it cycle in, through, and out of your body. 3. While sensing your breath, imagine your whole body dissolving, very gradually, into an oceanic tide: your head, pelvis, ribs, and limbs joining its fluid domain. Settle more. 4. Sense through your bones the rhythm of the tide; hear its breath. 5. Move, if you like, or be still. 6. Imagine tides pouring onto shores, spreading across beaches: do you follow their flow, softly tumbling to your side? Feel these same tides pulling away, gathering out to sea. Do you surrender to their pull? 7. Keep falling into the sea; drop into its rhythms. Let the sea move you, while you, becoming more like the sea, move it. 8. Discover, in this movement, a dance, and follow it. 9. Trust it. This dance, like the sea, cannot be wrong.

Variation For 7 minutes, free-­write your own memories of the sea in images, smell, and sound. Keep your pen moving. When you’re done, look at what you wrote. What evokes feeling in your body? What quickens or stills your breath? Use these memories as a starting point for your dance. Trust how your body responds.

Depth-­Movement Dance: Mapped by Sondra This map for a group experience is inspired by my early study in Germany with Mary Wigman and the dance therapy of Mary Whitehouse, who also studied with Mary Wigman. Depth-­Movement Dance also shares a great deal with Authentic Movement Practice, which grew out of the work of Mary Whitehouse. These innovations in dancing spontaneously from the inside out were foregrounded by psychologist Carl Jung’s development of methods of active imagination, which inspired his visual art. You will need a facilitator to explain the four-­part structure below, and to keep time, letting people know when one part ends and another is about to begin. To end part 1, the facilitator might say something like “When you are ready, open your eyes and look around to end your dance. Breathe deeply and let go. Wait for the end until everyone has finished.” Then the facilitator can cue a simple crossover into part 2, such as “Responsive dancers, are you ready?” The facilitator needs to understand the parts of the map and might keep a copy at hand.

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Part 1. Unfolding Dances 1. Find a supportive environment, either a studio or outdoor space. Make two circles, one large one on the outside and a smaller one on the inside. Make as much space between the circles as possible, still providing room for those on the inside to move in any direction. 2. Those on the inside lie down, curl up into an embryo shape, and close your eyes. There is no particular embryo that you need to be, just the one you discover for now. Wait to see what your shape will become. At first, let it be loose, but curled, and make your head comfortable in a resting position. 3. Embryo dancers wait for an impulse to arrive that will uncurl your body. Don’t make it happen, but don’t stop it, either. There is no way to get this wrong. Let your shape unfold. 4. If you encounter any difficulty with the unfolding, simply wait. Trust that a way out will come to you. 5. Keep going until you find a way to sit up or stand up, and this will be the end of your dance. Wait for others to finish.

Part 2. Responsive Dances 1. Inside dancers, look to the outside circle of witnesses, and change places with them. 2. Those who witnessed the dance from the outside circle, move to the inside and improvise a responsive distillation of what you witnessed. Be conscious of those dancing around you, and notice if your dances resonate together. Let your dance morph with others in the moment. Perform your dance back to the original dancers in any way that comes to you—standing, sitting, or lying down. Please open your eyes for this responsive performance. It might be wide-­ranging, or just a gesture. You don’t need to plan it. There is no way to do it wrong. Your response might be related to the whole unfolding dance as a group, or just reflect one person you witnessed. 3. The response is not a copy; rather it is an interpretation. 4. After the facilitator signals the end of the Responsive Dance, find a partner to share your experience with. This might focus on the experience of self-­moving in the unfolding, of witnessing the unfolding, of responding to it, or of witnessing the response. Just take any part or parts of it that interested you most.

Part 3. Timing The above process takes about an hour. Give about 15 minutes to the unfolding process. If some people finish early, they can watch the unfolding around them. Wait until everyone is finished. Take about 10 minutes for the responsive dances—and take another 10 minutes or more for sharing experiences. This is just a general time frame. Times can vary with different circumstances.

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Part 4. Reversing Roles Take a 10-­minute break before reconstituting the circles, so that the outside circle now moves to the inside and curls up to unfold. In other words, simply reverse roles. If you don’t have another hour in order to reverse roles, then just let the dance stand with one version. At another time, you can reconstitute the circles the other way around. All sides of this process motivate aesthetic awareness and connectivity through soma and psyche.

Option for Witnessing with Visual Art In this version, everyone does the Embryo Unfolding Dance as facilitated above, but the responsive dances are replaced by artwork. Participants should have a journal or art pad at hand and something to draw with—crayons or magic markers will do. When the unfolding is finished, make a picture of the experience. Take about 10 minutes for this, and keep it intuitive. Share your picture and dance experience with someone else or in a small group. You are cultivating intuition and courage, so be ready for surprising outcomes.

Lack of Art and Active Non-­Judgment In verbal discussions, practice non-­judgment in voicing your experience of both dancing and witnessing. Active non-­judgment is about paying attention to boundaries without setting limits. Think and speak with curiosity instead of closure. Figure 36. Portrait of Sondra Fraleigh at age seventy-­three. Photograph © 2012 by Jamie Martin.

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Likes and dislikes naturally enter into observations and performances, but they can simply be a part of your experience, without getting in the way. Those who have been in choreography classes may have developed a style of critique that is about making corrections and relaying taste—what works—what you like and dislike. Take this chance to release yourself from correcting others and yourself. Be a little subversive, and cultivate a lack of art. Remember that art is culturally driven by dominant goal-­setting. It can also arrive unannounced without strain or expectation in the eye of the beholder.

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Glossary Key Terms, Methods, and Narratives of Somatics These terms guide this book but by no means cover the somatics field as a whole. Some terms are in wide use but not always defined as presented here. Terms that are unique to Shin Somatics® are presented in a separate section at the end. active non-­judgment  attention to borders or margins without setting limits; allowing the unfolding of an idea, a movement, or dance in a responsive context; does not preclude selection of beneficial elements. affect; affecting  to produce a change, to move or influence emotionally, to impress; the experience of feeling and emotion. choreography  a movement plan; arrangement of movement in sequential forms, patterns, and rhythms; also referring to experiential or affective elements of planned movement. conscious embodiment  an ongoing process never quite finished; awareness of body relative to others and the world; making and doing with attention to bodily experience; mindful dynamic play—including dance, sport, and arts undertaken in light of awareness and embodied knowledge. cultural body  the body’s assimilation of culture, ways of moving and dancing; manners of dressing, eating, and behaving; body produced through interactions of biology and culture according to Antonio Damasio in Self Comes to Mind (312). dance improvisation  open-­ended dance explorations focused in the present moment; adaptability and changeability; the body’s flow of time, space, and mind; morphing even when pausing to reassemble; accepting what is; self-­modifying processes in movement expressions; emergent form. growing a self  building capacity through learning. growing in relation  realizing oneself as part of a larger whole and becoming responsive to the whole; the opposite of narcissism. healing  change in a positive direction; a process of restoring health, wellness, or emotional balance. human development  the process of human growth and maturation; in somatic movement arts, how changes in the organism can shape personality and growth in positive ways.

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intersubjective awareness  awareness of self in relation to others and community; often overlooked in definitions of somatics that focus on self-­development alone. movement habits  taken-­for-­granted movement, unexamined and for the most part involuntary; habits change through conscious use and choice. narcissism  the “me” stage of infancy, often persisting into adult life with an unhealthy focus on how one looks and what others think; countered in somatic studies through cultivation of non-­judgment and attention to the “inside” of an experience, not the appearance. natural body  produced by nature and the physical world, existing in nature; the body explained through biology; life; being born. perception  a sentient happening in conscious life subject to and often focused through intention; sense reception characterized and influenced by movement; active receptivity. soma  (1) the body as a whole; more narrowly, the precognitive body, a strata or core of being underlying awareness; the internal milieu of the body; (2) typically defined in somatics according to the Greek soma: the body as perceived by the self, or the introspective experience of body; (3) soma and psyche (vital essence) in relation provide the ability to commit to an action or emotion. somatic bodywork  tactile or kinesthetic hands-­on movement education and therapy where experiential values are at the center; bodywork done clothed and from various affordances—comfortable tables, supportive chairs, on the floor, and moving through space; recipients called students, since they are learning through touch and movement, also called clients in therapy. somatic intention  focus on conscious use of the body, especially improvement through movement and transformational possibilities. somatics  a wide field of study and practice, including movement and dance, bodywork, psychology, communication, and leadership. transformation  change in form or condition; in somatic contexts, shifting toward a better state of being and functioning. witnessing  seeing and responding to intuitive dances and movement performance without judgment, first evolved in the dance movement therapy of Mary Whitehouse, later taken up in Authentic Movement Practice, also developed in Depth-­Movement Dance through Shin Somatics.

Key Terms of Shin Somatics® aesthetics  originally from the Greek, aesthetikos, meaning perception; the philosophical study of affective and empathic phenomena such as beauty and

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expression, also ugliness, especially in the arts; not restricted to the arts, but applied widely to the study of nature, culture, movement, and the body. butoh-­influenced metamorphic dance  originating in Japan after WWII and now in use globally as a form of dance theater and therapy that seeks unconscious openings for healing; uses surrealist imagery to morph through unusual conditions and into flowers, mud, rust, stones, etc.; morphing from pain toward states of wellness; to dance anciently without closure or corrections. community body in dance  bonding through shared dances and improvisations; giving to the whole; not depleting nature and each other. choreographing somatic bodywork  performing a movement plan according to lines of least resistance encountered in the body of the recipient; involving improvisation in adjusting forms, patterns, and rhythms according to ongoing flux and qualitative response. Contact Unwinding  a partnering process in which one person supports the other’s movement or dance as it arises spontaneously; changing roles to begin again; emergent interactivity implicating skillful hands-­on and embodied contact. dances in the environment and on camera  open-­ended improvisations in varied environments: natural, architectural, and manufactured; relating to place and to others in the dance; use of the camera as witness; dancing the aesthetics of place—restful, wild, awesome, challenging, etc. depth-­movement dance  related to a process called Movement-­in-­Depth by dance therapist Mary Whitehouse, later called Authentic Movement; witnessing each other’s emergent dance improvisations and offering responsive dances in return; sometimes engaging verbal exchanges and artwork. flow patterning, flow repatterning  short flowing patterns of movement in simple-­to-­remember repeatable forms; in practice: adjusting intended movement patterns in relation to ongoing flux in self-­moving and moving with another; used in teaching through touch; called patterning in conceiving the patterns, and termed repatterning as the practitioner adjusts, eventually trying patterns that may be less available at first glance. intrinsic dance  dances done for their intrinsic worth; the experience of being present to evolving forms; valuing dance experiences with others. movement learning  learning primarily through movement, even when verbal instructions aid the process. moving consciously  moving with awareness, not necessarily with a well-­defined goal, but to pay attention to one’s movement in the emergent moment; intentional movement; a developmental process. phenomenology  a philosophical method that suspends bias; employing intuitive description as a way of studying one’s experience; the study of phenomena

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(anything appearing to consciousness); the perspective that self, other, and world exist in relation; also in somatic movement arts, the use of nonverbal expressions to augment verbal descriptions. possible-­selves 

emergent potential.

precognitive sensibility  sensations, affects, kinesthetic perceptions, and other sentient data emerging at the margins of consciousness but below conscious attention; the basis of somatic introspection and experiential (phenomenological) reflections. responsive dances  dancing back impressions of anything; witnessing through dancing. seeing and being seen in performance  Seeing as understanding and appreciating; practicing non-­judgment in witnessing; not separating audience and performers. shin  Oneness. Shin Somatics® bodywork methods  Affect Attunement; Teaching through Touch; Matching through Movement and Touch; Flow Repatterning; Focusing an Image; Clearing; Holding Presence; Active Non-­Judgment; Not-­Fixing; Not Advising; Exploring Options. silent meditation  mindful meditation; sitting in silence with attention to the breath; letting go of thoughts; developing resilience through patient sitting; tuning inward while relating to the vastness beyond one’s skin; allowing forgiveness of self and others; being present. somatic movement arts  artful actions cultivated for the benefit of participants and the building of community; movement-­based work aesthetically conceived for education and healing; cultivation of perception, affectivity, and conscious embodiment through appreciation of movement and change.

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Contributors

Richard Biehl is a public safety officer with a career spanning from 1978 to the present.

Throughout this time, he has maintained an interest in and study of Eastern psychophysical practices as well as Western sports. A martial arts practitioner for more than fifteen years, he obtained a fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He has competed in martial arts tournaments regionally, nationally, and internationally. During this time he also was a competitive powerlifter and obtained certification as a Class III powerlifter in the United States Powerlifting Federation. Biehl began practicing yoga in 1992 and continues to this day. He has studied with Beryl Bender Birch, Mukunda Styles, Mark Whitwell, and Sondra Fraleigh. He currently teaches somatic yoga classes in Dayton, Ohio—where he is also the chief of police. Robert Bingham (MFA) is a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University and Fulbright

Scholar Award recipient. For twenty years he has created and performed in experimental choreography throughout North America. He is a frequent collaborator with other artists, most recently working with performance and installation artist Laurel Jay Carpenter on the ongoing project CocoRose LIVE!, which has been performed on stages, streets, and on screen. From 2005 to 2012 he was the visiting artist in residence in dance at Alfred University. Robert has had extensive training in somatic modalities, including certification to teach yoga (Integral Yoga Institute, 1996), and graduation from Eastwest Somatics Institute (2003). He has studied in-­depth with butoh artist Diego Piñon in both the United States and Mexico. His essays and dance reviews have appeared in Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy, Dance Conditioning—Experiential Anatomy and Somatic Movement Lessons, Dance Journal, and elsewhere, and he has presented at arts conferences in the United States, Mexico, and Germany. For over a decade Robert has traveled regularly to India, where he has studied dance, yoga, and meditation and where he has also taught, choreographed, and performed. Dr. Hillel D. Br aude (MBBCH, PhD) is a philosopher of medicine, medical ethicist,

and Feldenkrais practitioner. He studied at the University of Cape Town Medical School and has practiced medicine in South Africa and the United Kingdom. He also holds a doctorate in history and the philosophy of medicine, the biological sciences, and bioethics at the University of Chicago, graduating cum laude. During his graduate studies, Braude completed a senior fellowship at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and he has subsequently worked as a clinical medical ethicist in Paris and Montreal. Following his graduate studies Braude completed postdoctoral fellowships in neuroethics with McGill University’s Biomedical Ethics Unit and Religious Studies Faculty. He published Intuition in Medicine: A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning in 2012. His current

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242 / contributors research focuses on affect, intentionality, and automatic elements of cognition in relation to clinical reasoning, research ethics, and moral philosophy. His awards include a Mellon Foundation-­University of Chicago Dissertation-­Year Fellowship and a European Neuroscience Network Visiting Exchange Grant, at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen. Hillel Braude lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Ita, and son, Ariel Ziv. Alison E ast (MPHED) is a New Zealand dance artist and educator. She is a teacher

of choreography, somatics, and dance ethnography and is currently chair of the Dance Studies program at the University of Otago, New Zealand. In 1980, along with poet and musician Denys Trussell, she founded Origins Dance Theatre and has made more than twenty-­five eco-­political mixed-­media dance works and numerous improvised performance events. In 1989 she founded New Zealand’s first choreographic training program, which now grants a bachelor of performing and screen arts, dance (Unitec, Auckland). She is a regular presenter at international conferences; her book Teaching Dance as if the World Matters: A Design for Teaching Dance-­making in the 21st Century was published in 2011. Alison (Ali) travels and teaches widely in India. Sondr a Fr aleigh (MA, RSMT, Feldenkrais®), professor emeritus, State University of

New York, College at Brockport, is the founding director of Eastwest Somatics Institute, now located in the beautiful color country of St. George, Utah. She has authored seven books and many chapters and articles on dance and philosophy, having undertaken special studies in philosophy as a graduate student at San Jose State University. She has been a member and frequent presenter at the American Society for Aesthetics where her first book, Dance and the Lived Body, was a featured new book upon publication in 1987. It has since been republished. Fraleigh has been a guest lecturer and teacher in Japan, India, Norway, Italy, Greece, England, New Zealand, and the United States. She is also a choreographer whose work has been performed internationally, and has recently revived her interest in composing music, which she pursued as an undergraduate and revisited for her master of arts in music and dance. She was selected as a faculty exchange scholar for the State University of New York, and received the “Outstanding Service to Dance Research” award from the Congress on Research in Dance. As part of her community service, Fraleigh teaches yoga for seniors and “yoga kids” in St. George, Utah. Kelly Ferris Lest er (MFA, RSMT), associate professor of dance at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), earned her bachelor of fine arts from the University of Memphis and her master of fine arts from the College at Brockport (SUNY). She received her certifications in Shin Somatics® in 2007 and in the Bill Evans Method of Teaching Dance in 2012. Lester serves on the board of directors for the National Dance Education Organization and the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She is a cofounder of Hub Dance Collective and continues to choreograph and perform professionally. Her choreographic work has been featured in ACDA’s Southeast Gala (2011), the Midwest RAD Festival (2014, 2015), Dumbo Dance Festival (2014), and other national and international venues. Lester is the recipient of a Lucas Endowment for Faculty Excellence and a USM College of Arts and Letters

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contributors / 243 Research grant to support her research in somatic pedagogy. She teaches Shin Somatics workshops and master classes nationally and internationally. K arin Rugman (BA, RSME) is an experienced performer, choreographer, and teacher

who has worked extensively in education and her local community in the United Kingdom for over thirty years. She has a background in contemporary dance and is an experienced somatic movement educator in Shin Somatics®, with additional experience in Alexander Technique, Tai Chi, Ideokinesis, and Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education. As a freelance performer and choreographer, Rugman has initiated and created numerous performance projects within local communities, schools, colleges, and theater groups, both locally and internationally. She is currently a senior lecturer in dance at Bath Spa University, where she has established an advanced program of somatic studies in the Dance Department. She offers certification programs in Shin Somatics through its affiliation with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and Yoga Alliance. Rugman’s research is concerned with the value of somatic practice in dance education. Her students investigate a deeper sense of self, developing an understanding of somatic awareness in dance technique, performance, and choreography. Rugman’s current interest is in exploring the potentials of somatic education in health care, with particular emphasis on health and well-being in the elderly population. Rugman has a bachelor of arts (Honors) in performing arts, a postgraduate certificate in education, and is a graduate of Eastwest Somatics. She is a fellow of the HE Academy U.K., a member of ESN (Eastwest Somatic Network), and a registered somatic movement educator with ISMETA. C atherine A . Schaeffer (MEd, MFA, RSMT) is a dance professor at Valdosta State University (VSU) in Georgia, where she teaches modern dance curricula, pedagogy, and dance sciences. She holds a master of fine arts in performance and choreography from Arizona State University, a master of education in dance from Temple University, and a bachelor of science in art education from Kutztown University. Schaeffer has performed with a dozen modern dance companies in New York City, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. She has directed her own site-­specific dance company and continues to present work professionally with her pickup company, Critical Mass DanceCo. Her somatic-­inspired choreography has been presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and was selected for the gala in the Southeast American College Dance Association conference. Schaeffer’s current scholarship is focused on somatic movement practices in choreography and dance education. In 2008 she received the VSU Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award and is published in the Somatics Magazine/Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences. An ISMETA-­certified registered somatic therapist (RSMT), she has presented master classes and workshops in Shin Somatics® both nationally and internationally. Schaeffer is a registered soma yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance, a past president of the Eastwest Somatic Network, and currently serves on the board of the Eastwest Somatics Institute. Je anne Schul (PhD, RSMT) is a dance specialist at Berry College in the Department of Fine Arts, where she coordinates the dance minor program and serves as artistic director

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244 / contributors of the Berry College Dance Troupe, which she founded in 1996. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she teaches courses in embodied dream work and the psyche-­soma connection. Schul holds a doctorate and master of arts in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation was “Creating Dances from Dreams: Embodying the Unconscious through Choreography.” She also has a master’s degree in dance from Texas Woman’s University and a bachelor of arts in dance and English from SUNY Brockport. Schul is a registered somatic movement therapist through ISMETA, having received her training and certification at Eastwest Somatics Institute. She is on the board of directors for the Eastwest Somatics Network, where she was the first president of the organization. Schul has numerous national publications and presentations in the area of dance and dreams, as well as yoga. She has been the recipient of many grants involving dance education, including the Berry College International Immersion Grant in 2012 to explore Latin dance and culture in Costa Rica, where she now leads international immersion classes. In 2010, Schul was awarded the New Mythos grant from the OPUS Archives and Research Center in Santa Barbara, California, to conduct research titled “The Divine Feminine: Dancing Us into Being.” Ruth Way is associate professor and associate head of the School for Performing Arts, Plymouth University, and program leader for the bachelor of arts Honors Dance Theatre degree. She has had an extensive career as a professional dancer and choreographer performing with Earthfall Dance and Lusty Juventus Physical Theatre, and has presented her practice as research though performative papers, articles, and performances internationally. With Russell Frampton, Way is codirector of Enclave Productions developing dance and art films, which have been screened in France, Russia, Estonia, Australia, Poland, the United States, and Brazil. Way has studied with Sondra Fraleigh in Eastwest Somatics movement practices since 2004. Her current research is focused on exploring connections between somatic movement practice and the sentient body in performance and film practice. Way regularly mentors emerging dance artists and choreographers and is a member of the board of directors for Plymouth Dance.

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Index

Italicized page numbers refer to pages with photographs. Adler, Janet, 204 affect attunement, 29, 31, 32, 32–33 aging, 28–29, 39, 70 Aizenstat, Steven, 183–84 Akiko, Kishida, 55, 69 Alexander, Frederick Matthias, 26 Alexander, Gerda, 26 Alexander Technique, xxiii, xxvii, 33, 202 alignment, 81–83, 198 Anatomy Trains (Myers), 142–43 Anima (East and Irwin), 169, 169–70 archetypes, xvii, 86–87, 183–86, 189–92 Art and Existentialism (Fallico), 64 Attenborough, David, 172–73 Authentic Movement, 77, 204, 223 autobiographical performances, 144–45, 146 autotelic purposes, 38–39 awareness: conscious, xxvii, 17, 53, 104, 119; consciousness compared to, 15; intersubjective, xvi, xxii, 127; kinesthetic, 84, 85, 199, 204; liminal, 25; present centered, 63–64; of self, xxii, 5, 65, 100, 102, 113, 128, 195, 198; sensory, xxvii, 116 Awareness Through Movement, 16–17, 56, 76 Back-to-Back explorations, 218 Bales, Melanie, xix, 19 Barbour, Karen, 158, 159, 161 Barker, Pat, 148 Bartenieff, Imgard, 26 Bartenieff Fundamentals, 75, 81, 101 Barthes, Rolande, 147 Batson, Glenna, xxvii Bausch, Pina, 41, 42, 135, 136, 145–46 “Be a Stone” Dance Map (Fraleigh), 216–18 Behnke, Elizabeth, 32 Being and Time (Heidegger), 64 being seen, 77, 142, 144 Bellows Breath (Bhastrika), 114 Berceli, David, 116 Bergo, Bertina, 126 Bergson, Henri, 167, 175 Berringer, Elizabeth, 62

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“Be Spinach and Stone Butoh” (Fraleigh), 221, 221–22 Bhastrika (Bellows Breath), 114 Biehl, Richard, xv–xvi, 110 Bill Evans Method of Teaching Dance, 100, 101 Bingham, Robert, xvi–xvii, 70, 154, 222–23 Birch, Beryl Bender, xv blocked chakras, 182, 188, 189, 190, 191 bloodsucker dream, 185–86, 187, 189–90 bodily kinesthetic learning, xxvii, 30, 31 body: consciousness, 21, 53, 111; and mind, 12, 14, 22, 65–66, 77–78, 90, 137–38; as nature, xvii, xxi, 173; scanning, 90, 119–20, 181. See also ecological bodies Body and Mind in Motion (Batson, Wilson), xxvii Body Eclectic, The (Bales and Nettl-Fiol), xix Body-Mind Centering, xxiv, xxviii bodywork: in Contact Unwinding, 200; in dance conditioning classes, 84; Eastwest Somatics Institute, xxiv, xxv, 78; matching in, 3, 37; movement in, 46, 52; nonsomatic, xxiii–xxiv; reflection in, 96; Shin Somatics, 36, 84, 97; somatic, xix, xx, xxiii–xxiv, xxv, 148 Bone, Breath, and Gesture (Johnson), xxviii Booth, Laurie, 141 boundaries, 11–12, 16, 38, 160, 225 Brach, Tara, 109 bracketing, 19, 157 Braude, Hillel, xvi, xxi, 4, 13 breath: in Clearing, 70; conscious use of, 10– 11; healing distress with, 121; interruption of habitual responses with, 5; scanning with, 181; yoga and, 114–15, 117–18, 119 breathing practices, 114–15 breath water sound, 114 breathwork, 10–11, 191 “Brief History of Somatic Practice and Dance, A” (Eddy), 77 Briginshaw, Valerie, 146 Brown, Richard, 114, 115

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246 / inde x Buis, Rose, 87, 87 “Burnt Norton” (Eliot), 15 Bush, Amy, 118 Butcher, Rosemary, 141 butoh: “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh” (Fraleigh), 221, 221–22; dances inspired by, 9, 44, 87, 89; “Dune,” 118, 121; ethereality of, 4; “Invisible Container,” 182; “Plant Us Butoh,” 50–51, 51, 57, 57, 58; publications about, 54, 61, 66; “Soft-Skin Sandstone Butoh,” 13; somatics and, 34–35, 61–62; transformation through, 58, 68 Butoh (Fraleigh), 54 Butoh-Inspired Metamorphic Dance, 44 BWS (breath water sound), 114 Campbell, Joseph, xv, 62–63, 121 chakras, xvii, 6–7, 182, 187–92 Chakra Unwinding, 44 Chiotaki, Aliki, xx, xxi, 197 choreography, 41, 42, 52–53, 77, 85–56 Clark, Barbara, 78, 82 clearing processes, 35–36, 70 cognition, 16, 126, 127, 129 Cohen, Bonnie Bainbridge, xxiv, xxviii, 27, 43 communities: building, xxii, xxix, 5, 61; contact unwinding and, 207–8; Dance Maps for, 214, 216–17; healing effects of, 118; learning effects of, 98, 101, 102, 105, 145; participation of, 51, 57, 61–62; respect within, 80; Shin Somatics and, 45 Conrad, Emilie, 27, 43 conscious awareness, xxvii, 17, 53, 104, 119 conscious embodiment, xxvii, 112, 113, 119 conscious movement, 14, 18, 21–22, 36, 42, 112, 118 consciousness: body, 21, 53, 111; ecological, 171, 174–75, 176, 177; expansion of, 9, 52, 171; extended, 13, 14, 80; habits and, 16–17; intentional, xix, xxiii, 126; as malleable, xix; participatory, 168, 177; perception and, xxi–xii, xxiv; somatic intention and, 173; somatic phenomena and, 10–14; somatic studies and, xxix, 15–16; whole body, xiv, xxiii, 11, 46, 66, 97–98 constancy, 31, 67, 68 Contact Improvisation, xiv, 200 Contact Unwinding: communication in, 208– 9; community awareness through, 207–8; experiential learning in, 197, 207; holding presence in, 203–4; images and, 205–6; improvisation, 197, 197, 208–9; journal writing about, 206–7; listening touch in, 200, 202; matching in, 33, 36, 204–5, 208;

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phrased movement exchanges in, 200, 201; present-centered attention in, 202–3, 204, 208; self-awareness development through, 198; shared verbal exchanges about, 206, 208; Shin Somatics and, 44, 125, 196–97; tactile-kinesthetic exchanges in, xvii, 200, 205–6, 208; as therapeutic, 198 Critique of Pure Reason, The (Kant), 167 Cunningham, Merce, 60, 136 cyclical process of learning, 95, 100, 104, 106–7, 214 Damasio, Antonio: on autobiographical self, 20–21; on consciousness, 13, 14, 15, 21, 198; Descartes’ Error, 12; on “feeling of what happens,” 11, 154; The Feeling of What Happens, 11–12; on “feelings of knowing,” 16; on homeostasis, 17, 39–40; on positioning of self, 16; on self-as-knower, xxviii, 6; Self Comes to Mind, 15–16 dance: conditioning, 84; education, 80–81; healing through, xxvii, 42; kinesiology, 84; as metaphoric language, 158; online, xvi, 104–6; performance, 40–41, 102–3, 214; somatics and, xxv, 5, 27, 41, 44; as thinking in movement, 155; training, 69, 136, 137–38; transformative healing in, xxvii; use of verbs of permission in, 102 Dance and the Lived Body (Fraleigh), xxvi–xxvii, 53–54 “Dance and the Lived Body” (Fraleigh), 64 Dance Appreciation Online, xv, 104–6 dance films, 87, 88, 147–49 “Dance for Georgia O’Keeffe” (Meeder), 215 Dance Maps: “Be a Stone” (Fraleigh), 216–18; “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh” (Fraleigh), 221, 221–22; community experiences in, xxvii, 216–17; Depth-Movement, 70, 223–26; “Dune,” 118, 121; “Ecodances” (East), 219–21, 220; “Memory” (Lester), 222; as performance templates, 58, 213–15; “Soft-Skin Sandstone Butoh,” 13; “Speaking Bodies—Back-to-Back” (Schaeffer), 218, 218–19; “Tides,” 222–23 Dance of the Origin (Trussell), 168–69 Dance, Somatics, and Spiritualities (Williamson), xxvii Dancing Identity (Fraleigh), 12, 138 Dancing into Darkness (Fraleigh), 54 dancing the chakras, xvii, 7, 188–89, 190, 191, 192 Decety, Jean, 129 Delsarte, François, 27 depression, 112–13, 114–15, 117, 119

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inde x / 247 Depth-Movement Dance (Fraleigh), xxx, 25, 69–70, 196, 223–26 depth-movement dances, 34, 47, 118 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 12 Devall, Bill, 174 developmental movement, 5, 43, 46–47 Dewey, John, 27 Dissanayake, Ellen, 171, 178 Dowd, Irene, 75, 97–98, 100 dreaming dances, 86–87 dreamlike image experiences, 161–62 dreams, 181, 182–86, 187, 189, 192 “Dreams” seated meditation, 160–61 dream work, 186, 192 dualism, 12–13, 137 DuChamp, Marcel, 148 Duncan, Isadora, 27 “Dune,” 118, 121 Duprès, Madée, 141 Dyer, Becky, 20, 84–85 ease, effortless, 55–56 East, Alison (Ali): Anima, 26, 169; “Ecodances” Dance Map, 219–21; “How Being Still Is Still Moving,” 165; “Rock Improvisation,” 172; wind-made and human-made patterns, 220 “East Coker” (Eliot), 97 Eastwest Somatics Institute: background information, xix–xx, xxv, 21, 28, 30, 31; bodywork practices, xxiv, 3; mission statement, 96; practice paths, 34; Shin Shin Ichinyo (logo), 34, 65, 66–67; somatic approaches of, 14, 32; teaching methods of, xix. See also Land to Water Yoga (practice); Shin Somatics eco-dance camps, 168, 175–76 “Ecodances” Dance Map (East), 219–21, 220 ecological bodies, 165, 166, 176, 177, 177n2 ecological consciousness, 174–75, 176, 177 Eddy, Martha, xxv, xxviii, 26, 27–28, 43, 77, 80 educare, 8–10 education. See dance education; somatic education; somatic educators; teaching through touch educational/therapeutic learning, 198, 207 effortless ease, 55–56 Eliot, T. S., 15, 97 embodied consciousness, xxi, 79 embodied dreams, 180–81, 185 embodied knowing, 100, 158–59, 161 embodied knowledge, 135, 149 embodied mind, 12, 65 embodied self-awareness, 113, 128

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embodiment, conscious, xxvii, 112, 113, 119 Embryo Unfolding Dance, 225 empathy, xvi, 20, 33, 53, 129–31 Endicott, Jo Ann, 146 Englander, Joan, 131 environmental dances, 50–51, 118, 121, 224 Etter, Christina Sears, 18, 24, 25 Evans, Bill, 95, 100, 101–2, 103, 106, 107 experiential knowing, xxviii, 30, 103, 104, 107 experiential learning, 27, 107, 144, 198, 207–8 Fallico, Arturo, 63–64 Farber, Viola, 60 Farhi, Donna, 114 feedback loops, 129–31 “Feeding the Ghosts,” 153–54, 154, 156 Feeling of What Happens, The (Damasio), 11 “feelings of knowing,” 16 Feldenkrais, Moshe, 24, 26, 36, 86, 124 Feldenkrais Method, xix, xxiii, 16–17, 56, 76, 130–31, 132 Ferris, Anne Marie, 18 Five Rhythms, 43 fixing, not, 36, 37–38, 141, 144 flight/fight/freeze response, 112, 115 flow, tonic, 39, 40 flow repatterning, xix, 33, 35, 46–47, 70 Four Agreements, The (Ruiz), 140 Four Quartets (Eliot), 15, 97 “Four Ways of Knowing” (Heron), 103, 106, 107 Fraleigh, Christina, 55, 149 Fraleigh, Sondra H.: Archetypes of Transformation workshop, 214; “Be a Stone” Dance Map, 216–18; “Be Spinach and Stone Butoh” Dance Map, 221, 221–22; Butoh, 54; Dance and the Lived Body, xxvi–xxvii, 53–54; Dancing Identity, 12, 138; Dancing into Darkness, 54; Depth-Movement Dance (Fraleigh), xxx, 25, 69–70, 196, 223–26; Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, 54, 61, 66; Land to Water Yoga, xxvi, xxx, 7, 68–69, 69–70, 95; “Molecules of Motion,” 87–88 Frames of Mind (Gardner), 30 framing, 83, 171, 219 Frampton, Russell, xvi, xviii, 147, 148 Freedom and Nature (Ricoeur), 17–18 Freeman, John, 147 Freire, Paulo, xv, 95–96, 98, 106, 107 Fulkerson, Mary, 141 Functional Integration, xix, 76, 130–31, 132 Gablik, Suzi, 175 Garber, Patricia, 114, 115

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248 / inde x Gardner, Howard, xv, xxvii, 30, 31, 95, 100, 101 Gendlin, Eugene, 53 Gindler, Elsa, 26, 124 Goldberg, Natalie, 159 Goldfarb, Larry, 62 Goldstein, Kurt, 127 Graff, Angela, xx, xxvi, 13, 121 Graham, Martha, 60, 136 Great Goddess, 62, 189–90, 193 Green Light reflex (Landau response), 116 Guillaume, Nathalie, 69, 131 gurus, 59–60 Guthrie, Duke, 88 habits: matching and, 36; movement, xxiii, 16–19, 21, 196; responses as, 5, 37 Hackney, Peggy, 43–44 Haggerty, Meredith, 57, 57 Halprin, Anna, xxv, 27, 43 Halquist, Don, 100, 101, 107 Hamilton, Julyen, 141 hand-made patterns, 220 Hanna, Thomas, 26, 27, 75–76, 116, 135, 137–38 Hanna Somatics, 75 haptic perception, xxiv, 31, 35, 37, 127 Harada Nobuo, 3–4 Harris, Judith, 188 Harrison, Lou, 61 Hartley, Linda, xxvii, 141 Hatha yoga, 67, 110, 110, 117–18 Hawking, Stephen, xix–xx Hayes, Elizabeth, 28, 60 H’Doubler, Margaret, 28, 95 healing: conscious embodiment and, 112, 113; Dance Maps and, 214; mindfulness and, 119–20; movement and, 27, 46, 53, 56; relaxation response and, 56; soma and, 42–43; yoga as, 115, 117–18 Healing and the Mind (Moyers), 111 Heddon, Deirdre, 147 Heidegger, Martin, xix, 35, 63, 64, 66 Heron, John, 95, 103, 104, 106, 107 Heshusius, Lous, 168 Hijikata Tatsumi, 7, 35, 66 Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo (Fraleigh), 54, 61, 66 Holding Presence, 63 holding presence, 83, 90, 99, 197, 202–3, 204–5 Holm, Hanya, 60 homeostasis, 17, 39–40 hooks, bell, 98

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Housley, Janine, 25 “How Being Still Is Still Moving,” 165 How Walking Becomes Dancing, 70, 82–83 human development, xxiii–xxiv, xxx, 30, 34, 46, 67, 68. See also infant movement development hurdler position, xxv, xxvi Husserl, Edmund, xvi, 14, 15, 16–17, 20, 125–26, 127 hyletic data, 125, 132n4 Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Husserl), 126 images: in Butoh, 34–35; in Clearing, 70; as content of consciousness, 15–16; in ecological seeing, 70; embodied mental, xxviii, 190; somatic mental, viii, xx, 18, 154–58, 159–62; in therapeutic dance, 190. See also archetypes; somatic dreams imaginative wisdom, 85–86 improvisation: being present in, 156–57; chakra work and, 188–89; classes and, 83; Contact Unwinding, 197, 197, 208–9; cultivation of problem solving in, 83; in Dance Maps, xxvi, 213–14, 216, 220, 222–23, 224; in Depth-Movement Dance, xxx, 25; as intrinsic dances, 31; as intuitive, 172, 172–73, 177; matching and, 18, 36–37; somatic intention in, 173 individuation, 187, 188, 192 infant movement development, xxx, 37, 46–47, 68–69, 84, 141–42 Inmost Sway (Schaeffer), 87, 88 Integral Yoga, 52, 67, 68 Integrative Restoration (iRest), 120 Intelligence Reframed (Gardner), 30 intelligences, xxvii, 100, 101, 104 intention, xxi, xxii–xxiii, 173 intentional movement, xxiii, 125, 126, 128, 131, 132 intersubjective awareness, xvi, xxii, 127 interventions, 113, 117, 118 “Invisible Container,” 182 iRest (Integrative Restoration), 120 Irwin, John, 169, 169–70 Ismaloun, Mathilde, 67–68 Jackson, Philip, 129 Jacobson, Edmond, 27 Jacoby, Heinrich, 27 Jaques-Dalcroze, Émile, 27 Javery, Susan, 58 Johnson, Ciera, 218 Johnson, Don Hanlon, xxv, xxviii, 5, 26, 27–28, 124

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inde x / 249 Jones, Bill, 41, 136 Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, 62 journal writing, 206–7, 215 Juhan, Deane, 199 Jung, Carl, xxix–xxx, 27, 53, 100, 101, 187 Kabat-Zinn, Jon, 56, 111, 203 Kanai, Fumie, 55 Kaprow, Alan, 171 Kasai, Akira, 63 Kasl, Elizabeth, 103–4 Kawagishi, Keiko, 58 Keleman, Stanley, xvi, 75, 76, 89 Kermode, Frank, 164 kinesiology, dance, 84 kinesthesia, xvi, 31–32, 55, 125–26, 128–29, 199 kinesthetic awareness, xviii, 84, 85, 199, 204. See also tactile-kinesthetic exchanges “Kinesthetic Perception in Movement” (Fraleigh), 60 Kishida Akiko, 55, 69 Kleinman, Seymour, xxv, 5, 26 knowing: embodied, 100, 158–59, 161; experiential, xxviii, 30, 103, 104, 107; feelings of, 16; practical, 103, 104; presentational, xxii, 103–4, 107; propositional, 103, 104, 107 Kolk, Bessell van der, 119 Kroef, Sri Van der, 182 Kundalini Yoga, 67, 187, 188 Laban, Rudolph von, xv, 26, 27, 28 Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), xxviii, 20, 81, 101 LaMothe, Kimerer, 44, 53 Landau response (Green Light reflex), 116 Land to Water Yoga (Fraleigh), 7, 8, 68–69, 69–70, 95; hurdler position, xxvi; and infant movement development, xxx, 69–70; publication of, 68–69; rainbow bridge from, 8; on somatic movement, 95; on unwinding chakras, 7 Land to Water Yoga (practice): in dance conditioning classes, 84; development of, 56–57, 67, 68; in Eastwest Somatics workshops, 142, 149n9; infant movement development in, xix, 69, 142 languaging images, 158–59 Lardner, Stephen, 169 learning: eco-pedagogical approach to, 174; educare, 8–10; experiential, 27, 107, 144, 198, 207–8; hierarchy of, 103; kinesthetic, 30, 31; modes, 30–31, 197; as reciprocal, 102; somatic, 29, 195–96, 200; through

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discovery, 208. See also cyclical process of learning; self-learning Lester, Kelly Ferris, xv, xxii, xxvii, 94, 99, 222 Levinas, Emmanuel, xvi, 125, 126, 128 Levine, Peter, 112 liminal awareness, 25 listening through touch, xxiv, 18, 35, 36, 141, 200, 204 LMA (Laban Movement Analysis), xxviii, 20, 81, 101 Logical Investigations (Husserl), 14 “Lucid,” 86 “Lucid Dream Dance,” 86, 87 “Lucid-Dream Dances I–III,” 75–79, 87 lucid dreaming, 86–87 Luria, A. R., 128 Lyons, Talluluh, 186 Making Connections (Hackney), 43–44 Margetts, Keren, 195, 209 massage, xxiii, xxiv matching: in bodywork, 3, 37; clearing and, 35–36; in Contact Unwinding, 33, 36, 204–5, 208; and flow repatterning, 32–33; in improvisation, 18, 36–37; movement and, 32–33, 130; movement and affective dynamics, 32; movement and touch in, 36–37, 44; not fixing, 36, 37–38; selflearning and, 99–100; tactile-kinesthetic, 35–36; touch in, 17, 17, 32, 36, 98, 99, 99, 131, 204; in walking, 32, 33, 36. See also tactile-kinesthetic exchanges Matsumoto-sensei, 55, 61 Matt, Pamela, 77, 80, 82 Matter and Memory (Bergson), 167 McKayle, Donald, 60 McNeely, Deldon Anne, 181, 186 meditation: deconstruction of self through, 14; mindful, xxviii, 10–11, 53, 54, 59, 69, 111; somatic experience processes in, 44; walking, 50–51, 51, 217, 219; Zen, 1–10, 10, 64, 174 Meeder, Ashley, 215, 215 “Memory” Dance Map (Lester), 222 Mensendieck, Bess, 26 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: on body as expression, 29; on body as of space, 14; flesh as outside/inside structure, 128–29; “lived body” philosophy of, 27; Phenomenology of Perception, xxii, 14; on positioning of self, 16; and somatics and other, 125, 132n5; and somatics as “chiasmatic” practice, 126–27; study of perception by, xvi Mézières, Françoise, 26

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250 / inde x Middendorf, Ilsa, 11, 26 Midway Model, 79–80 Miller, Richard, 120 mind, 12, 15–16. See also body: and mind Mindful Brain, The (Siegel), 53 mindful meditation, xxviii, 10–11, 53, 54, 59, 69, 111 mindfulness, 53, 55, 113, 118, 119 mirroring, 130, 141 “Molecules of Motion” (Fraleigh), 87–88 Mother, The, 67–68 Mother Nature archetype, 189–90, 193 “Motional Baggage” (Schaeffer), 218 Mountain Stride, 56 movement: conscious, 14, 18, 21–22, 36, 42, 112, 118; developmental, 5, 43, 46–47; habitual, xxiii, 16–19, 21, 196; healing through, 27, 42, 46, 53, 56; intentional, xxiii, 125, 126, 128, 131, 132; and somatic activity intersubjectivity, 125. See also matching; infant movement development Movement in Depth, 204 movement patterns, xxv, 56, 196 movement repatterning, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, 35 moving: as nature, 167–68, 168–71; with nature, 167 Moyers, Bill, 62, 111 multiple intelligences, xxvii, 100, 101, 104 Myers, Thomas, 142–43 “My Stroke of Insight” (Taylor), 160 Nakajima Natsu, 61 Nakamura, Tamah, 66 Needleman, Jacob, 50 Nelson, Kay, 32 Nelson, Matthew, 182 Nettl-Fiol, Rebecca, xix, 19 neural mirroring, 130 neuroscience, xvi, 12, 46, 66, 127–30 nightmares, 183–84, 185, 186, 192 Nikolais, Alwin, 60 Nine Easy Pieces (East), 220 non-judgment, 59, 63–64, 99, 225 not fixing, 36, 37–38, 141 not needing to fix, 141, 144 Novaczek, Irene, 168 Ogden, Pat, 118 Ohno Kazuo, 54, 61, 66, 216 Ohno Yoshito, 55, 61, 66, 67 Olsen, Andrea, xxv, 44, 99–100, 176 oneness, xxv, 12, 14, 63, 65, 68–69 online dance, xvi, 104–6 Opoku, Albert, 70

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Osserman, Wendy, 77 Other, 125, 126, 129–30, 131, 166–67 Panksepp, Jaak, 127 participatory consciousness, 168, 177 Paxton, Steve, 141 Pearls, Fritz, xxix Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 95–96 perception: and consciousness, xxi, xxiv; as essential to somatics, xxix; haptic, xxiv, 31, 35, 37, 127; and somatic movement, xxi; as subject to intention, xxii performance, xxix, xxviii, 24, 42–43, 85, 144–47, 214; templates for, 213–14 permission, verbs of, 18, 85, 102, 105 Petit, Jean Luc, 128 phenomenological descriptions, 19–20 phenomenology: bracketing techniques in, 19, 157; as bridge for neuroscience/somatics, xvi, 125–29, 132; definitional method of, xvi; definition of somatics through, xxi–xxii; as eidetic science, 126, 127; intention and, xxi; perception and, xxi–xxii; and self, 16, 64; present centered awareness and, 63–64; understanding somatics through, 11 Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty), 16 phrased movement exchanges, 200, 201 “Plant Us Butoh,” 50–51, 51, 57, 57, 58 possible selves, 34, 61–62, 64–65 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), xvi, 112, 114, 119, 120 Potts, Norianna Deisel, 221 practical knowing, 103, 104 practice: integration with theory, xxviii; in performance, 214 practitioners, xxii, xxiii, xxx, 8–9, 33, 35–36, 38, 98, 126, 130 precognitive cellular states of being, xvi, 125 presentation, 9, 100, 101, 214 presentational knowing, xxii, 103–4, 104, 107 present-centered attention, 63–64, 202–3, 204 Pringle, Lyne, 169–70 propositional knowing, 103, 104, 107 proprioception, 31, 95, 99, 101 psyche and soma, xx–xxi, xxiii, 4–5, 6, 188 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) , xvi, 112, 114, 119, 120 “Radical Passivity in Levinas and MerleauPonty” (Bergo), 126 rainbow bridge movement, 8 Ratnam, Anita, 55 reaching pattern, xxv

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inde x / 251 Red Light reflex, 116 reflection, 95, 96, 98, 106–7 Reich, Wilhelm, 27, 43 Reid, Katrina, 87 relational seeing, 170, 178n16 relaxation response, 56 release techniques, 9, 43 repatterning, flow, xix, 33, 35, 46–47, 70; of movements, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, 35 responses, habitual, 5, 37 responsive dance, 19, 141, 224 “Returning to the Dance” (Trussell), 168 Rhythmic Breathing Technique (Sudarshan Kriya), 114 Ricoeur, Paul, 17–18, 21 Ririe, Shirley, 28 “Rock Improvisation,” 172 Rodiger, Ann, 62 Rolf, Ida, xxix, 26 Rosen, Marion, 10–11, 26 Roth, Gabrielle, xxvii, 43 Rugman, Karin, xvii–xviii, 196 Ruiz, Miguel, 140 Ryle, Gilbert, 66 scanning, 90, 119–20, 181 Schaeffer, Catherine A., 75–79, 76, 86, 87, 87, 88, 218, 218–19 Schul, Jeanne, xvii, 7, 62–63, 86, 182 Schupp, Karen, 80, 81 Schwartz, Ray Eliot, 44 self-assessment skills, 81 self-awareness, xxii, 5, 65, 100, 102, 113, 128, 195, 198 Self Comes to Mind (Damasio), 15–16 self-evidence, 21–22 self-inquiry, 196, 198 self-learning: dialogue and experience in, 100; facilitation of, xv, 27, 95–96, 100–102; key elements of, 106–7; matching and, 99–100; practitioner’s role in, 97–98; reflection in, 96–98; whole person in, 103. See also online dance self-perception, xxi, 4–6, 36, 46, 205 self-referencing, 143, 143 Selver, Charlotte, 26, 124 selves, possible, 34, 61–62, 64–65 sensory awareness, xxvii, 116 Sensory Awareness Processes, 34, 44–45 sensory-enhanced yoga, 117–18 sensory motor amnesia (SMA), 116, 137 Sessions, George, 174 Sewall, Laura, 170, 176 Seyle, Hans, 112

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Shah, Parul, 55 Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine, 20, 128, 157, 158 Shin (oneness), xxv, 6, 59, 65 Shin Shin Ichinyo (logo), 65, 66–67 Shin Somatics: background of, xxv–xxvii; bodywork, xix, xxiv, 3, 35, 46, 97, 181; experiencing processes, 44–45; improvisation in, 83; methods, 45–46; movement repatterning in, xxiv, xxv, xxvi; moving with nature and, 167; overlapping movement arts in, 46–47; pedagogy, 79–81; responsive dance in, 140–41. See also Contact Unwinding; Land to Water Yoga (practice); matching Shodo Akane, 54, 63, 65 Shusterman, Richard, 170 Siddha Yoga, 52 Siegel, Daniel, 13, 53 Six Easy Lessons for Walking on Air, 81 Skinner, Joan, 27, 43 Sklar, Deirdre, 139 SKY (Sudarshan Kriya Yoga), 114–15 Slow Motion, Silent Walking Meditation, 217 SMA (sensory motor amnesia), 116, 137 “Soft-Skin Sandstone Butoh” Dance Map, 13 soma: and change, xvi; ecological, 169; healing and, 42–43; perception and, xx–xxi; phenomenology and, 126–27; psyche and, xx–xxi, xxiii, 4–5, 6, 188; therapeutic exploration of dreams and, 181; as whole body consciousness, 46 somatic bodywork, xix, xx, xxiii–xxiv, xxv, 148. See also bodywork somatic consciousness, 171, 173, 174, 177 somatic dreams, 181, 182–86, 192. See also dreams somatic education, 26–27, 76, 79–81, 136. See also somatic pedagogy somatic educators, 98, 100 somatic image experiences, 154–55, 156, 161 somatic intention, xxii–xxiii, 173 somatic interventions, 117, 118 somatic learning, 29, 195–96, 200 somatic modalities, 95 somatic movement, xxi, 5, 19; goal of, 26–27; lessons, 93; overlapping dimensions of, 46–47; perception and, xxi–xxii; therapies, 181. See also matching somatic pedagogy, 79–81, 95, 104–6, 107 somatic practitioners, xxii, xxx, 8–9, 33, 35–36, 38, 130 somatic psychology, xxix–xxx, 43

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252 / inde x somatics affecting, xvi, 129–32, 130–31 somatic sensations, xvii, 180–81 somatics history, 26–29 somatic studies, xxix, 15–16, 29, 34 somatic therapies, 181, 192 somatic yoga, xv, xxiii, xxvi, xxx, 5, 56–57. See also Land to Water Yoga (practice) Somatic Yoga and Mindfulness Meditation, 34 “Soul Descending” (Schaeffer), 86, 87, 88 Speads, Carola, 26 “Speaking Bodies—Back-to-Back” Dance Map (Schaeffer), 218, 218–19 spine alignment lesson, 81–83 Sri Aurobindo, 67, 68 Stern, Daniel, 31, 32, 131–32 Stern, Isaac, 100 stillness, xxviii, 55, 59, 63, 97, 98, 201 Stinson, Susan, 158, 159 “Stone Dance,” 148 Storey, Michell Akane Sugimoto, 25, 57 Strozzi-Heckler, Richard, xxix Strozzi Somatics, xxix student-centered learning, xv, 95–96. See also self-learning Styles, Mukunda, xv Sudarshan Kriya (Rhythmic Breathing Technique), 114 Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, 114–15 Sulcas, Roslyn, 41 Summerlin, Nicole, 218 Summers, Elaine, 27 Sweigard, Lulu, 26, 78 tactile-kinesthetic exchanges, xxiv, 35–36, 199–200, 205, 208 Taylor, Jill Bolte, 160–61 teaching through touch, xix, xvii, xxiv, 3, 52, 181, 197 Teaching to Transgress (hooks), 98 therapies, somatic, 181, 192. See also recovery Thiele, Mathilde, 26 “Tides” Dance Map (Bingham), 222–23 Todd, Mabel, 26, 75, 78 tonic flow, 39, 40 Topf, Nancy, 27, 43 touch: listening through, xxiv, 18, 35, 36, 141, 200, 204; in somatic movement approaches, 5; teaching through, xix, xvii, xxiv, 3, 52, 181, 197. See also haptic perception; matching; tactile-kinesthetic exchanges “Towards a Theory and Practice for WholePerson Learning” (Kasl and Yorks), 103–4

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Trager, Milton, 26, 75 Trager Menastics, 75 transformations, 5, 7, 89, 124–25, 127, 129. See also somatics affecting trauma: reflex, 116; unresolved, 110 traumatic illnesses, 110, 112–13, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119. See also post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Trussell, Denys, 166, 168–69, 171 Tuning and Naming (East), 219 ujjayi pranayama, 114, 115, 119 unfolding dances, 224, 225 unresolved trauma, 110 Utah Sunshine (Way and Frampton), 148, 149, 149n19 Vandekerckhove, Marie, 127 Vatsyayan, Kapila, 55 verbs of permission, 18, 85, 102, 105 Viridian (Way and Frampton), xviii vitality forms, 131–32 Waiting Trees (East), 170 Walking and Writing Meditation (East), 219 walking meditation, 50–51, 51, 217, 219 Waltzer (Bausch), 146 Warrior Two pose, 110 Way, Ruth, xiii, xvi, xxv, 148, 197 “Ways We Communicate, The” (Fraleigh), 55 West, Britanni McDuffie, 87 Whitehead, Alfred North, 27 Whitehouse, Mary, xxix–xxx, 60, 77, 204, 223 Whitwell, Mark, xv, 115 whole body consciousness, xiv, xxiii, 11, 46, 66, 97–98 Wigman, Mary, 27, 28, 60, 223 Wildman, Frank, xxiii, 62 Wild Wolf dream, 183–85 Williams, Barry, 180, 186 Williamson, Amanda, xxvii Wilson, Margaret, xxvii wind-made patterns, 220 Wisdom of the Body Moving (Hartley), xxvii Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 58 Woodbury, Joan, 28, 60 Woodman, Marion, 189 “Words from a Dancer” (Fraleigh), 28 “World Cities” (Bausch), 41 Wunderlich, Pamela, 182

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inde x / 253 X6 Collective, 141, 149n7 Xelhuantzi, Rames, 215, 215 yoga: breathing practices, 114; and chakras, 6–7; Hatha, 67, 110, 110, 117–18; and healing, 111, 117–18; Integral, 52, 67, 68; interventions, 117; Kundalini, 67, 187, 188; mindfulness in, 111, 118; and movement pattering, 6; sensory-enhanced, 117–18;

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Siddha, 52; somatic, xxiii, xxx; Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY), 114. See also Land to Water Yoga (practice) Yorks, Lyle, 103–4 Zaner, Richard, 124 Zaporah, Ruth, 157 Zarrilli, Philip, 136–37 Zen meditation, 1–10, 64, 174

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