Category Archives: the body

Nov30

mammal (save the date)

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Costume for Mammal by Christine Joly de Lotbinniere

Last year I wrote this about the new dance I am building, called The Traveler (terra incognita), part of my new solo work, Little Fictions, Ragged Memoirs, which will premiere in Cambridge at the Dance Complex in June 2016.

“It is a dance that is chewing me up.  It is so hard, physically and emotionally, that I am often afraid to rehearse it.  Tom Waits’s music is like the mule driver and the light in the dark. Working on this dance, I enter through a door that I hope won’t explode and find myself sometimes in a mine field, other times in a field of flowers.  It is the music, but mostly what comes slithering and snapping out of my body.”

This year I have been opening another door to a new work called Mammal.  Initially called it Beast, but felt that Mammal was a roomier title, one that had space for the ferocious and the tender.  The dance is still downloading, but the essence is there.

I will be performing an excerpt of Mammal January 17 at the Booking Dance Festival in New York City.  Here are the details.  I will post times and ticket information shortly.  Please save the date.  Please come!

January 17
5:30-11:30 pm

The Allen Room
Frederick P. Rose Hall
Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center

Located in the Time Warner Building at Central Park’s Columbus Circle
Broadway & West 60th St.
New York City

 

 

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Nov21

to gladden the heart

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What Actions are most excellent?

To gladden the heart of a human being.
To feed the hungry.
To help the afflicted.
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful.
To remove the wrongs of the injured.
That person is the most beloved of God
who does the most good to God’s creatures.

~  Muhammad ~

For the past three years I have been studying Somatic Experiencing, the trauma healing work developed by Dr. Peter Levine.  We are currently in the final Advanced module of that training, focusing on touch.  After all of the lectures, the practice sessions, the questions, the confusion, the flashes of insight, this poem is what the training cooks down to.  Helping others feel better.  Simple as that.  We have a lot of tools and perhaps the most important of those is our focused intention, our desire to create a space where balance and coherence can emerge.

I will be working with clients using Somatic Experiencing in combination with the other tools of Somatic Movement Therapy, including the possibility of working with horses in a therapeutic context.

Contact me for more information or to make an appointment.

Oct23

the dance of fascia

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During the recent ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association) annual meeting, the dinner conversation turned (passionately) to fascia. What is it?  How does it work?  It is the connective body-suit – the structure that, if we removed everything else, would still show our shape as a body.  It is the tissue that supports everything else, through which the other structures thread.  When the fascia becomes dry or inelastic, so do we.  Habitual restrictions are born in the fascia.

Our mobility, integrity, and resilience are determined in large part by how well hydrated our fascia is. In fact, what we call “stretching a muscle” is actually the fibers of the connective tissue (collagen) gliding along one another on the mucous-y proteins called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs for short). GAGs, depending on their chemistry, can glue layers together when water is absent, or allow them to skate and slide on one another when hydrated.1,2 This is one of the reasons most injuries are fascial. If we get “dried out” we are more brittle and are at much greater risk for erosion, a tear, or a rupture. (read more)

Now watch this beautiful video.  How have you nourished your fascia today?  The principles of somatics, including variation, slowing, awareness, connectivity, breath support and focusing on the whole as well as the parts are all essential food for our fascia.

Sep8

a beautiful read

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I have just finished reading Waves in Deep Still Water: Listening for Mind by Candace Crosby.  I met Candace this summer at the Body-Mind Centering Association conference in Portland, Oregon.  “May I join you,” at lunch opened out into shared stories, including the one that is the heart of her beautiful book.

For over ten years, Candace worked with Christi, a young woman who had suffered a catastrophic traumatic brain injury as a result of a car accident.  With Christi’s  parents and a devoted team of medical and alternative practitioners, Candace brought her empathetic skills, her curiosity and heart to the mystery of helping Christi trace a path back into the world.  This is not a story with a simple ending.

It is Christi’s story, but also Candace’s.  With great vulnerability, she traces her own questions and fears about the direction and shape of her work.  Her process of opening and discovery is a parallel journey to Christi’s.  This book is an important part of the conversation about vulnerability and healing. The title captures beautifully the need for dropping deep to feel the subtle movement that arises from the apparent stillness where all of the usual signs and markers are absent or only faintly felt.