Maggie introduced her Awareness Through Movement class this morning, with a presentation on neuro plasticity: the structuring of experience within the brain, and the influence of Brain-Derived Neutrophic Factor (BDNF).

I don’t really understand how it works but she seemed to be describing a switching mechanism in the brains neuro chemistry that shift between the development of new patterns and the use of established patterns – well that’s a gross simplification, but it did start me thinking about how I might work in a more detailed way with audience experience at a neuro-psychological level.

After this talk we paired off and where asked to make contact with out partner by sitting in chairs opposite each other and placing out right palms together in front ourselves, and exploring what we do and feel. After a few minutes, Maggie invited us to talk with each other about our experience of this contact, and then asked us to give an account of what our partner told us to  the rest of the group. I enjoyed this test of our listening and recollection.

We then repeated this task with a focus on exploring how we could feel more comfortable within ourselves through postural adjustments, shifting our weight on the chair, initiating the forward/backward motion of our palms in space from subtle movements in our pelvises, and eventually through the inclusion of our sternums in the gentle push-pull action.

Paying attention to my own organisation on the chair, feet on the floor, and feeling through my hand, into Lizzie’s hand, through her hand and into her posture, provided me with a great experience of the Feldenkrais Functional Integration work as an interaction between two nervous systems: two systems, working together as a third system.

In the third part of the lesson we did an Awareness Through Movement lesson that involved ballancing books (folders) on our right foot, and exploring our ability to gently and easilly tilt this book in various axes: forwards/backwards and left/right. Afterwards, I was suprised at how softly this foot fell to the floor when we where asked to plonk it down onto the floor, and how much softer was the ripple effect of this action through th erest of my pelvis and thorax – the other foot by contrast caused a mild jolt through my pelvis upto my head (movement of spine).

For the first time in weeks, no, months… I’ve had a day of being body-focused. although, its taking some time to switch out of previous work modes and into this one. this morning began with Catherine leading a session centering around the body. for the first time in my Feldenkrais, yoga, meditation or other semi-relaxing session, i didn’t drift off at all.

The first workshop saw us progress into drawing outlines of our bodies (and planting sketches of skeletons within): trying to focus on our felt experience of the body while drawing representations of ourselves.

self image in progress

The switching between the analytical mode of experiencing the world and the “felt” became really predominant during this exercise. so often i resorted to what i think or know about the proportions of my body… and so much harder to draw from a feeling of my body. this only skims the surface of what we are re-addressing at this workshop: for me, that shift into body space, where it has all been head-space in the months leading up to this Bundanon residency.  following on from the self drawn image of body, then the real moment of truth, another person (in my case george) tracking around my body with a different coloured texta. at this point, the confrontation is minimal, although i was hoping that i had exaggerated and proved wrong… but no, my hips really are that wide.

This immediacy of self image really brings both the notion and the reality into the fore of my consciousness. and using simple tools such as texta to drive creativity from my body (whether thats just from physical movement, or my position in space in relation to the object i am creating). repositioning myself alongside and “in” my body was a very necessary excercise to continue with the following workshops.

Today the iron wood ensemble who are in residence over at Bundanon’s other site came to visit.  They are a group of classical musicians who are here to experiment and try out new repertoire and new ideas for three weeks.  They are in a similar head-space to us, wanting to take risks, play, try new things, get to know each other better, make discoveries. There was a surprising number of connections and cross overs in the things we are all doing – they are thinking about playing with and through their bodies more. They talked about flow and the felt experience of playing compared to the imagined or planned experience. I can’t wait to see them play at Angel Place in March and watch their arms and hands and their feet as they put their whole bodies into their playing. It was a real testament to the value of a place like this – conversations can happen here that couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Interestingly for me, they are also being joined by a phd researcher from UWS who is doing think-aloud,  video-cued recall and diary research with them about their playing and learning, similarly to the way i worked in my phd.  More on this later.

We enter a process led by Catherine, in which we are invited to work with clay to create a body. The sensation of drying wet clay on my skin is unpleasant, while the experience of a body growing beneath my hands is exciting. Sitting at the “head end” of people is how I spend a great deal of time as a Feldenkrais practitioner. It’s often how I begin, as I find a place of connection. It’s a tender approach to another human being; the least invasive and the most mysterious. My clay person grows from this intimate perspective; ‘he’ grows from head to toes. Knowing is from my body, my heart, through my hands. The body shapes the clay, becomes a being. Respect for a being enters my touch as I begin to find the shapes in this body described by an active skeleton. The interaction animates, livens the clay. ‘He’ lives while we interact. Afterwards, it’s an interesting piece, enlivening curiosity.

We come back to clay again after an Awareness Through Movement session, and blindfolded, enter into another process, making ‘MY body’. I bring my attention to the feeling of my body in that moment – what stands out? My pelvis is strongly present to me through my sensation, really alive, and so my hands trace into a small ball of clay an impression of what I am feeling. Whereas yesterday, pen on paper, the pelvis remained elusive, frustrating, now excitement rushes through me, into my hands finding the bone-rich forms in 3-D, echoing my sense of this in me, the power of the sacrum and lower spine. Working upward is not possible with clay, and I really want to express the lightness of my spine upward through my chest. I’m lost for a while, feeling the darkness, listening to the sound of George moving rhythmically, insistently, moulding his clay alongside me. I REALLY want to look! Resigned to constraint, I take another small clump of clay and find the form of my shoulders and thorax. Time runs out, eyes are uncovered, and I am surprised by how much I can see in this latter piece.

Catherine blindfolded us today and asked us to make ourselves in clay.  I thought of myself lying in bed.  I always lie on my side. Unable to see what i was doing my felt-sense of the volume and shape of my body became very vivid.  It was a peculiarly intense sensation, to use my own hands to form my head, my neck, the curve of my back. Later on Somaya gave me a back rub, and I had the strangest feeling that it was the second one of the day.

When we took our blind folds off we saw that almost all of us had sculpted ourselves lying on our sides.  We had also all got our proportions almost exactly right.

The power of the blindfold is very inetersting to me right now.  Our visual sense so dominates our experience of the world – and it feels to me today that it is also linked firmly to my own analytical stance.  I appraise things with my eyes, i judge them.  Unable to see, I felt my way through the clay – i explored its properties, I worked with it and did not try to impose my version of the world on it. What would be the equivalent of a blindfold when I write?  What would help me work with the words and feel my way through them rather than trying to wrangle them into a form that I expect to be pleased with?

Working with clay – what a treat! I absolutely loved it. I felt like Auguste Rodin, shaping human form out of a lump of clay, so malleable, yet requiring physical force, an engagement of the whole body not just the hands. Imagining the flesh, the volume, the density, the boniness, the receptivity to touch.

In the first session Catherine asked us to sculpt a body out of clay. In the second session we sculpted our own body while blindfolded. The body was to assume a posture or gesture familiar to us. In between these two sessions, Catherine lead us on a Feldenkrais exercise working with tilting the pelvis, articulating the spine and rotating the entire arm from the shoulder. At the beginning of the exercise, she asked us to register where the act of sculpting still resonated in the body. For me, I felt a glow in my abdomen, lower arms and hands.

My first body sculpted out of clay

The first clay sculpture had an almost chicken-like lower half, swollen abdomen, drumstick thighs. The chest was like heavily whipped water, almost ravaged. I wanted to show the intensity of emotion experienced in this part of the body. The clay allowed a easy translation of the dynamic, emotive qualities of human experience.

My body in clay ... sitting cross-legged

I felt a freedom being blindfolded, not caring so much about getting the visual form “right”. The pleasure in the body moving and making, feeling and stroking the clay, came to the foreground. I sculpted standing up, feeling the force of the earth under my feet feeding through my body and hands into the clay. I took heed of Catherine’s reminders about taking care of my body in the act of making … where was I holding tension, where did it hurt … shifting to a new position.

I notice my sculptures were both incomplete forms, offering suggestions, ambiguity in interpretation.

EXPERIENTIAL ANATOMY

In the act of drawing my own body outline and skeleton, i found myself ocscillating between drawing from the felt sense (how my imagination traced the edge of the body, the weightiness of bones and flesh pressing into the floor) and drawing on known anatomical models and ways of depicting bones. My sketchy knowledge of anatomy, the exact shape of bones, was challenged in this exercise. But then, that wasn’t what the exercise was about.

modes of representation, how to draw a bone, limited/limiting resources/skill, falling back on known ways, not really attending to the felt sense of my body

body image – constructed, imagined, lived, distorted

For Merleau-Ponty, the body image is dynamically constructed according to the value of the task.

I had difficulty gauging and translating the actual length or dimensions of my neck (i live with a long neck) into a visual representation, drawn on paper. I drew my neck longer than it actually was, despite using my hand to measure its dimensions. When drawing my body and checking visually what a certain part of the body looked like, I got mixed up between what it looked like in a prone position and what it looked like in a standing position, as the fall and twist of the limbs is different in each. At some point, Catherine made the statement, “what are you trying to do”. I then realised that I was attempting to achieve an accurate visual rendering from the outside, rather than a rendering from the felt internal sense of the body. In response, I began to vary the quality of the linework to suggest the quality of the felt sense of the limbs and bones, in particular, the heaviness or lightness, the torsion.

the felt contour of the body, focus of sensation, wavering line of coincidence, staying with, dropping out

Drawing from felt sense ... or not

THE SITUATED BODY

Wandering in the pastures and bush at Bundanon. Taking note of the effect of the environment on my bodily sensations and in turn, whether the attendance to the felt experience influences or changes my perception of the external environment.

A tall, spindly tree holds my attention. Its surging verticality commands an uplift in my own posture, a rising and thinning, a thin energetic line upwards. The surrounding trees conspire in this uprightness.

A surging sense of verticality

Further along the track, the peeling orange bark like a contagious skin disease rivets me to the spot. I stay a while, watching, listening. The sound of a leaf falling on the dry ground startles me. I feel a grabbing in my chest, the space above my diaphragm spasming. Another leaf or branch drops. I tune in to the staccato cascade of sounds, twitching and turning towards each sound. On the alert, ready to gather and move … my own small drama in the bush.

I stay with this listening. My own foot steps sound clomping and insensitive, out of place in the delicate warble of the bush. The steep slope invites a small musical phrase of footwork. Dry leaves rustle and crunch under my dancing feet.

Monday

We converge at Riversdale, a place of retreat, generous offering, unbelievably beautiful.

I thought this article by Edward S. Katkin of the Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, is an interesting review of G. Ádám (1998). Visceral Perception: Understanding Internal Cognition. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 232.

Edward Katkin titles his review, The last word on gut feelings, which I think is a more than appropriate subject for our consideration.

Notebook sketch for movement-tracking video paint brush. Minute (often involuntarilly jerky) shoulder or pelvis rotations are turned into wall-to-wall caligraphic circles around the room.

This is an idea I’ve had for some time now – a basic image in physio and bodywork: imagine your (insert body part here) as a paint brush, painting circles on the ceiling. I was thinking about ceiling projections at first, then imagined using a giant broom to paint horizontal stripes around the entire room.

This could easilly done using a 4 projector array – one on each wall. I’m thinking big, messy super-wide brush strokes, like painting with a broom.  You’d use variations in smoothness/jagginess  of the body movement to control things like brush preassure, saturation, bleed etc. What it needs is an accurate, high resolution way of tracking these minute movements i.e movements within an area of between 1 to 2 square inches, and to bea ble to have an opperator manually zoom into to the appropriate area of the body.  More details soon…