Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives
500
Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives
500eBook
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Overview
This anthology negotiates the influential, yet silent educational presence of spiritualities within the field of somatic movement dance education internationally. The expressive and integral nature of spiritual experience remains academically undefined and peripheral to our understanding of creative practice. Lack of theoretical rigour, as well as a lack of a substantive definitional and methodological competency, has resulted in spirituality being marginalised. To date, important questions about how diverse spiritualities shape professional practice in the somatic movement and dance arts remain unanswered. This cutting-edge collection fills that void, providing greater creative and discursive clarity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783202904 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 500 |
| File size: | 12 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Amanda Williamson is is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Coventry University.
Glenna Batson is Professor Emeritus at Winston-Salem State University.
Sarah Whatley is Professor of Dance at Coventry University.
Rebecca Weber is a somatic movement and dance educator who serves as an adjunct professor at various Philadelphia-area universities.
Amanda Williamson directs the Centre for Somatic Movement and Dance Therapy, where she trains students and has a private practice. She is also director for the Association of Somatic Movement Therapies, UK and the Republic of Ireland, and a visiting professor at Coventry University (C-DaRE). Amanda supervises Ph.D. students in the UK and USA and is considered one of the pioneers within the ISMETA paradigm. Her life is dedicated to emerging and bringing visibility to the field, training students and merging science with creativity. She is chief editor of the peer-reviewed journal Dance, Movement & Spiritualities.
Glenna Batson (PT, Sc.D., MA) is an independent researcher/lecturer in dance, Somatics and science. For the past 35 years, she has honed a trans-disciplinary approach to the study of embodied cognition by bridging dance, science and somatic studies. Glenna is professor emeritus of physical therapy at Winston-Salem State University (USA) and is an internationally recognized teacher of the Alexander Technique. Her current research focuses on the neuro-phenomenology of imagery in movement creation. She recently authored Body and Mind in Motion: Dance and Neuroscience in Conversation and co-edited Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities: Contemporary Sacred Narratives.
Sarah Whatley is founding editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. She is Chair of Dance and Director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University, UK. As a dance practitioner, educator, theorist and writer, her research spans a wide range of topics where dance is at the core.
Read an Excerpt
Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities
Contemporary Sacred Narratives
By Amanda Williamson, Glenna Batson, Sarah Whatley, Rebecca Weber
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-289-8
CHAPTER 1
Embodiment of Spirit: From Embryology to Authentic Movement as Embodied Relational Spiritual Practice
Linda Hartley
Throughout four decades of study and professional practice as educator and therapist, my two primary interests — somatic movement exploration and embodied spiritual practice — have woven together in both implicit and explicit ways. A foundation of my somatic work has been the study of infant movement development, as taught by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen in the somatic movement practice of Body-Mind Centering® (Cohen 1993; Hartley 1995). I continue to be fascinated by the way that re-embodying early movement patterns can give support and clarity to posture, movement expression, emotional life and the psychological development of a sense of self, as well as essential grounding and inspiration for spiritual opening and creative work.
My interest has led me to explore more deeply our earliest origins in embryological development, and it is here that I sense most directly the interface of the somatic and the spiritual. Ken Wilber has written about the pre-trans axis, showing how experience in the pre-personal, pre-egoic realms of early life and the transpersonal, trans-egoic realms of mature spiritual experience interface, and can lead, one into the other (1980: 49-57). I see this connection most clearly in the unfolding development of the embryo, from conception into human form; I have come to understand this embryological process as the embodiment of spirit.
Another foundation of my practice is the discipline of Authentic Movement, as developed by Janet Adler (Pallaro 1999, 2007; Adler 2002). In this discipline, material emerging from the unconscious — pre-personal, personal, transpersonal and collective — is embodied in movement, gesture, stillness and sound in the presence of a witness who attends to her own experience in the presence of the one moving. Both engage in a direct experience of the moment that is both individual and shared. Sometimes moments of clarity and resonance — a unitive state — enable a shared experience of the sacred, of the divine, of the spiritual or transpersonal (Adler 2002: 209).
In this chapter, I would like to weave a path between these two areas of study and practice — the experiential study of embryology as embodiment of spirit and Authentic Movement as embodied relational spiritual practice. I will refer to a map, informed by Buddhist principles, of Source, Being and Self, developed by Maura and Franklin Sills, to give context (Sills 2009). In my paraphrasing of their map, Source is the pure and universal consciousness, out of which we differentiate into individual Being. Being is pure presence and awareness, which becomes inevitably obscured as we meet the environment that we are conceived in, born into and nurtured by. Self develops as patterns of need, feeling, behaviour, perception, attitude and thought form our individual character, our unique way of meeting and responding to relational others and the world as we grow. Self represents the functional unity of psyche and soma (Reich 1970: 241-42).
In this model, there is always health and wellness at the level of Being: though it may often be obscured, it is always present and available to us. In this state of pure awareness and presence, we are no longer fragmented and disconnected. Self manifests our wounds, the ways we lose touch with Being, but Being is always present, a profound resource we can return to and through which we can connect to Source. Sometimes embodying early movement processes — perhaps present before later disruptions and trauma severed our innate wholeness — offers direct access to feelings of integration and well-being, and to our core sense of Being and Source.
Embodiment Practice
Describing the embodiment practice of Body-Mind Centering®, which she has been evolving since the 1970s, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen writes:
The process of embodiment is a being process, not a doing process, not a thinking process. It is an awareness process in which the guide and the witness dissolve into cellular consciousness. Visualization and somatization provide steps to full embodiment, helping us return to preconsciousness with a conscious mind.
Embodiment is automatic presence, clarity and knowing [...], the cells' awareness of themselves [...]. It is a direct experience; there are no intermediary steps or translations.
(2008: 157)
This work needs to be experienced; it cannot be understood through a solely cognitive approach, as embodiment is about states of awareness and presence that are experienced beneath and beyond the cognitive processing of higher brain centres. Just as in the practice of meditation, if we settle for a moment into spaciousness of mind, a place of pure awareness and presence — of Being — beyond the chattering mind, and if we have also anchored ourselves in our physical being through mindfulness of body sensation, then we become in that moment fully aware, present and embodied. Immanent spirituality, as distinct from transcendence, can be touched.
Embodiment practice enables intimate explorations into the extraordinary processes of human anatomy, physiology and development. We learn to perceive from the cells of our body — not the mind looking at the cells, but mind being fully centred in the body, in the cells themselves, and perceiving from there, the cells knowing themselves. We can learn to perceive from the cells of different tissues in the body and to experience the different qualities of awareness, perception, touch, feeling and movement that each tissue evokes.
In exploring, as adults, the process of infant movement development, we embody movement patterns and principles of sensory-motor integration that underlie our phylogenetic (species) and ontogenetic (individual) evolution (Cohen 1993; Hartley 1995; Aposhyan 1999; Brooks 2001; Stokes 2002). By embodying these movements fully, from initiation, through the sequencing of an action, to its completion, we re-establish core support, strength and ease of movement. Our nervous system recognizes the basic neurological patterns that are the foundations of all adult movement potentials, and will choose the pathways that offer the greatest ease of organization, connectivity and flow once they have been embodied. Our inner self will choose health when supported to do so. Through this practice, movement is re-patterned for greatest efficiency and grace. We may also gain insight, through embodying early movement processes, about the psychoemotional dimension of those experiences. A direct knowledge of embryological, fetal, perinatal and infant states of being and feeling can be accessed.
It is important that we bring conscious awareness to these explorations, or we may regress to a preconscious, pre-egoic state that cannot be integrated into consciousness. With conscious awareness, we open the pre-trans axis, a potential flow of experiencing that links spiritual qualities such as joy, wonder, wisdom, love and deep connectedness with insight about our early pre-egoic development. As in the discipline of Authentic Movement, we seek to maintain the presence of an internal witness as we enter the realms of the pre-personal or transpersonal, so that these altered states of consciousness can be encountered safely and integrated into consciousness.
The 'Gestures' of the Embryo
In the experiential study of embryology, Cohen describes how it is 'the place of space' which we embody (2008: 166). For example, the notochord, precursor to the spine, disperses as the vertebral spine develops, but we can connect to the sense of space between spine and digestive tract to contact the location of the embryonic notochord. Moving from this space has a distinctly different quality from movement initiated with awareness centred in the spine or digestive tract.
The embryonic structures no longer exist in physical form; yet the relative place and shape in the body that they once occupied can be contacted. As we move from this place and sense of spatial structure, we may come to 'know' something of the experience of the embryo at that stage of development through our embodied cellular consciousness. Moving through the changing forms of the growing embryo, we may discover something about the meaning of becoming a human being.
Embryologist Jaap van der Wal talks of the speech of the embryo as being a sequence of gestures that the embryo makes as it grows (2005). Development involves the expression of polarities that emerge in sequence and whose integration leads to a new level of form and function; integration of all polarities gives the human embryo its uniqueness. He describes how development is movement, an extraordinary dance that invites spirit to enter into matter. By entering into the forms and movement gestures of the embryo, embodying them, we can discover what the gesture is communicating. He writes:
If you open your heart and try to put yourself into the position of the embryo and join in experiencing the gestures of growing that are taking place there, all at once the embryo will tell you a very profound story. It will tell you the story of becoming a HUMAN BEING, of the struggle of the person and his [or her] spirit to come to light through the tough resistance of cells, genes, tissue. A human being performs so much work and lives so intensely while being an embryo!
(van der Wal 2011; original emphasis)
He encourages us to look at the gestures of the embryo from a phenomenological viewpoint, rather than observing and analysing behaviour as science generally does. The latter gives explanations, but the former invites a journey deep into ourselves to address questions as to 'why.' It invites discovery of sense and meaning:
If you don't enter the marvellous world of the embryo with the detached and cold contemplation of the onlooker, but you open your heart and your soul and join in to EXPERIENCE what's happening there, you will be able to discover behind the facts nothing less than the activity of SPIRIT.
(van der Wal 2011; original emphasis)
With this invitation, I would like to offer a description of some of the gestures the embryo makes as it comes into form, and a glimpse into the meanings they may suggest. I also propose that the embodiment practices of Body-Mind Centering® and Authentic Movement are ideal vehicles through which to explore the embryological journey.
An Embryological Journey: The Dance of Conception — Masculine and Feminine Polarities
The two that are polar opposites belong together. The egg (ovum) and sperm cell are both extreme in their form and function, and will move towards death if they do not come together in conception. With conception the opposite occurs — a new life begins (van der Wal 2005: 3).
The ovum has been present in a woman's body since she was a fetus in her own mother's body — we each began life in the womb of our grandmother. The ovum carries our ancient history and connection to our maternal lineage. It is the largest cell in the body, with a large cytoplasmic body, spherical, not very mobile, but stable; its movement tends to be rotational. In contrast, sperm cells are short-lived, active, mobile, small and lean; they have virtually no cytoplasmic body, just a nucleus and tail, and their movement is quick and linear. By imagining ourselves into these forms and movement qualities, we may experience the very different energies that these two original cells contribute to our fundamental sense of being; the archetypes of masculine and feminine are at the root of all that we will become.
The dance of conception takes about 24 hours. The hundreds of sperm cells that have reached the ovum, against all odds and through great adversity — the original heroic journey — swim around the large egg cell and set her in motion, spinning slowly on her axis. However, only one sperm will penetrate the zona pellucida, a membrane that surrounds the ovum. Only one sperm will be 'invited' through the ovum's membrane; the membranes then fuse and the sperm's body is incorporated into the cytoplasm of the egg, all of this initiated through mutual chemical processes (Grossinger 2000: 103). The first experience of relationship, of opening to 'other,' has taken place. The next will occur about a week later with implantation into the uterine wall.
The process of conception, and the actual fusion of the two cells' nuclei, strikingly resembles a sensual courtship dance, culminating in the act of love-making itself. Barry Werth writes, 'the egg's protoplasm starts to shimmy, violently. The nuclei of sperm and egg sidle towards each other, enlarge and shed their protective membranes' (Tsiaras and Werth 2002: 50). Within twelve hours, the nuclei merge and the maternal and paternal chromosomes attach to form a full set of 46; they will soon begin the process of differentiation into the trillions of cells that make up the unique individual being that the zygote will become.
Cleavage: Many Differentiating Out of One
A single-celled being has been born. It has an inside that is separated from the outside by a double-layered membrane. Communication happens between the inside and the outside through the process of cellular breathing or internal respiration. The polarities of inside and outside are integrated by fluids passing through this defining membrane, enabling nourishment and energy to be absorbed, and supporting a new level of existence to emerge — a new life. The subtle pulsation of expansion and contraction of the cell is the first movement the new being makes, and it continues to be the fundamental motion of life throughout the whole life cycle. Our health depends on the integrity of our cell membranes and their ability to mediate between the internal cellular environment and the external fluid environment in which they live.
The first cell division, or cleavage, takes place about 30 hours after fertilization, forming a pre-embryo consisting of two virtually identical cells. What is happening during this long time of apparent inactivity? A pause while the decision to incarnate is made? A time for soul or spirit to enter matter, to inspire it into growth? We can but speculate, but when we embody the dance of conception, then take time to feel this spacious moment, a little of the mystery of the process of new life beginning may be glimpsed.
Two days after conception, cell division occurs again, and then regularly every ten to twelve hours, until the one cell has become a sphere of individual cells, all similar but beginning to differentiate. Then something remarkable occurs: some of the cells migrate around the inner surface of the zona pellucida, to form a softer protective membrane (trophoblast) made up of cells that are part of the self-structure of the pre-embryo. The remaining cells form an inner cell mass that will become the embryo itself (Grossinger 2000: 149; Martini 2001: 1069). At this point, we are both body and containing membrane, the one held and the one who is holding. I feel this has profound implications, offering a template for wholeness and self-integrity.
From now on, these two structures will follow entirely different lines of development. The outer membrane will interface with the mother's body, the womb-home, thus embodying relationship. The securing of nourishment through the placenta and of protection through further development of the membrane will both be served by this outer layer. The inner cell mass, called the embryonic disc, will grow into a human embryo.
Implantation — Self and Other: Coming into Relationship
After several days floating in the womb, as if in space (Nilsson 1990: 62), the blastocyst must implant, or come into relationship with the maternal environment, to survive. Implantation is the process of embedding into the uterine wall, finding a home within which to develop. At this point, another extraordinary event occurs: 'the blastocyst hatches from the zona pellucida, which allows it to expand and release the cells on its surface to interact with the outside' (Tsiaras and Werth 2002: 57).
You can feel this moment by imagining you are wearing a tight bodysuit to create a feeling of constriction in your whole body, then imagine you take off the suit and feel the expansion and release that this enables. You may be able to feel the sense of expansion in the cells themselves as they are released. Feel how different it is to relate to someone with this sense of constriction and then with the feeling of release. Sometimes we retreat back into our protective membrane and inhibit the flow of connection with the world; at other times we bravely, fearfully, lovingly or joyfully open and expand to meet it.
After hatching, the blastocyst backs into the endometrium wall, burrowing deep within the maternal tissue until completely embedded. It will continue its journey hidden and protected within the wall of the uterus.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities by Amanda Williamson, Glenna Batson, Sarah Whatley, Rebecca Weber. Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Amanda Williamson, Glenna Batson and Sarah Whatley
Part I: Moving Spiritualities – Amanda Williamson
Chapter 1: Embodiment of Spirit: From Embryology to Authentic Movement as Embodied Relational Spiritual Practice – Linda Hartley
Chapter 2: The Alchemy of Authentic Movement: Awakening Spirit in the Body – Tina Stromsted
Chapter 3: Dancing in the Spirit of Sophia – Jill Hayes
Chapter 4: Body Ensouled, Enacted and Entranced: Movement/Dance as Transformative Art – Daria Halprin
Chapter 5: Dancing on the Breath of Limbs: Embodied Inquiry as a Place of Opening – Celeste Snowber
Chapter 6: ‘Can They Dance?’: Towards a Philosophy of Bodily Becoming – Kimerer L. LaMothe
Part II: Reflections on the Intersections of Spiritualities and Pedagogy – Sarah Whatley
Chapter 7: Reflections on the Spiritual Dimensions of Somatic Movement Dance Education – Martha Eddy, Amanda Williamson and Rebecca Weber
Chapter 8: Postmodern Spirituality? A Personal Narrative – Jill Green
Chapter 9: Working Like a Farmer: Towards an Embodied Spirituality – Helen Poynor
Chapter 10: Intimate to Ultimate: The Meta-Kinesthetic Flow of Embodied Engagement – Glenna Batson
Chapter 11: Permission and the Making of Consciousness – Sondra Fraleigh
Chapter 12: Conversations about the Somatic Basis of Spiritual Experiences – Sylvie Fortin, Ninoska Gomez, Yvan Joly, Linda Rabin, Odile Rouquet and Lawrence Smith
Chapter 13: Inner Dance—Spirituality and Somatic Practice in Dance Technique, Choreography and Performance – Kathleen Debenham and Pat Debenham
Chapter 14: This Indivisible Moment: A Meditation on Language, Spirit, Magic and Somatic Practice – Ray Schwartz
Chapter 15: Global Somatics™ Process: A Contemporary Shamanic Approach – Suzanne River, interviewed by Kathleen Melin
Part III: Cultural Immersions and Performance Excursions – Glenna Batson
Chapter 16: Dancing N/om – Hillary Keeney and Bradford Keeney
Chapter 17: Dancing with the Divine: Dance Education and the Embodiment of Spirit, from Bali to America – Susan Bauer
Chapter 18: The Sacrum and the Sacred: Mutual Transformation of Performer and Site through Ecological Movement in a Sacred Site – Sandra Reeve
Chapter 19: Dancing and Flourishing: Mindful Meditation in Dance-Making and Performing – Sarah Whatley and Naomi Lefebvre Sell
Chapter 20: ‘What You Cannot Imagine’: Spirituality in Akram Khan’s Vertical Road – Jayne Stevens