Our fluid body - Nuestro cuerpo fluído

The spine's segmental anatomy lends to its being articulated in wave forms. To begin this exploration and release some of the cultural conditioning and held tensions, you are invited to explore lateral and dorsal-ventral undulation.  To enhance the resonant environment sound is an excellent resource, as India has recognized for thousands of years in the form of mantras.  For this exploration two supportive sounds that compliment front to back and side to side undulations are "ew" (as in dew) and "ee" (as in see), respectively.

“Undulatory movements are not utilitarian in the conventional sense; it is not an efficient movement for “fetch wood—carry water.” It is, however, a vital movement for restoration.” —Emilie Conrad. “Life on Land”. 

One of the basic movements of water is the wave.  Our bodies are made up of more than 70% water.  Thomas Hanna has said that we never really left the sea, we found the way to bring the sea with us to the land.  It is our inner environment still. Water is responsive to sound, to vibration, to electrical currents, one of its native forms is undulatory.  On the fascinating capacities of waves is the encoding and transmission of information, whatever its medium, water, air or earth, or in our bodies themselves.  It is through its fluid, undulatory nature that water brings into touch with resiliency.

“The Primordial Anatomy re-capitulates the atmosphere of the sea even though the movement is taking place on land. The same buoyancy that we experience when in water returns as our internal sea becomes more dominant.” —Emilie Conrad, "Life on Land"

Emilie Conrad, a dancer, then a great innovator in the field of somatics identified three anatomies of our body.  It it through our bodies that we experience existence and thereby describe it.  Normally we describe reality through the conditioned cultural anatomy that is imposed by the society, parents and institutions from the outside.  We take on this patterning, this filter and call it reality.  But Conrad has identified two other anatomies:  the primordial anatomy and the cosmic anatomy. The primordial anatomy recapituates the sea, or origins.  In addressing the cosmic anatomy Emilie says it can be thought of quintessencial unity where all nourishment is available, it is much harder to grasp from the mind with language as in quintessential unity, there is no other, there are no objects.

For now the focus is on the primordial anatomy, our fluid body and its implications to movement and experience as a birthrightas human beings, as vertebrates.  The invitation being offered is to experience, and reembody the spine from a fluid experience, from a wave form, containing and transmitting information to the whole body.

Even bone becomes more resilient cartilaginous when in a more resonant vibratory environment. When we have abandoned the hardened survival circuitry of fight-flight-freeze, the whole system becomes more available to sustainance, more permeable to new information, the feeling tones change, to nourishing sensual, pleasurable

In engaging the fluity of the spine consciously, we activate our biointelligence, that intelligence which the body itself is an expression of, but from which our awareness is largely divorced.  It is an intelligence with is universal, not homosapien-centric, but rather an expression of the body of life itself in all its myriad forms.  Taking a peek into the organization of the human  brain we find that there is a section near the center called the somatosensorial cortex.  It is in this part of the brain that our felt or proprioceptive "map" of the body is held, where ability to consciously sense our bodies is held.  And this part of the brains acuity or sensitivity can be developed.



An additional breath resource which is very effective for moving vital energy in the body in the yogic tradition is called "ujjayi pranayama".  It consistists in closing or constricting the base of the throat very slightly so that the breath becomes audible.

While working with the spine, intersperse the soft front to back undulation with the side to side undulation, using the audible breath, that Emilie at times called the lunar breath or bone breath, as describe.  Take time to pause in open attention to sense deeply what you begin to perceive through your proprioceptive capacity to feel your body.

Explore this undulatory dance of the spirne for half an hour to an hour, and then write about your experience, your observations, anything that changed, anything that surprised you.

Llaves para abrir las puertas a la soma :: Keys to Unlock the Doors to Soma

"Soma es la palabra griedga que, desde tiempos de Hesiodo, ha significado "cuerpo vivo". Esta percepción internalizada, viviente y auto-sintiente, es radicalmente diferente de la percepción externalizada de lo que llamamos un "cuerpo"...  —Thomas Hanna, Somatics.

“La presencia fluida de nuestros cuerpos es nuestra medio fundamental; somos el agua móvil llevada a la tierra.”  —Emilie Conrad. “Life on Land”. 

La soma es el "cuerpo vivo" en su integridad y la somática consisten en cultivar la experiencia directa del cuerpo, del "cuerpo de la vida" como lo llamaba Thomas Hanna, es aquello que eres como un ser corporal. A esto también se le ha llamado la experiencia primaria.  Y como la vida es movimiento, se puede concebir a la danza como el primer arte, el arte que intrínseco al hecho de estar vivo. Se me hace muy apto la frase que usaba Emilie Conrad para referirse a ello, a la soma, al cuerpo de la vida, le decía el baile del baile.

Como podemos encontrarnos con este mundo del baile del baile, del cuerpo de la vida, de experiencia primaria? Estamos hablando de algo que en un sentido real es temprano e intrínseco a nosotros, y por lo tanto parece evadir nuestra consciencia cotidiana, está presente implícitamente dentro de nosotros todo el tiempo, pero en general no participamos plenamente en ello.  De hecho es probable que pasamos la mayoría del tiempo mirando para otro lado— automatizando nuestras acciones, volviéndonos inconscientes de nuestro movimiento para que podamos "funcionar" y concentrarnos en otras cosas.  En general, así nos entrenan en la  escuela, para funcionar en automático.  Mientras que esto tiene alguna utilidad, puede que también tenga un costo muy algo, el de cortar nuestra conexión con la fuente misma de nuestro ser,  con la raíz de nuestra fuerza de vida, con el asombro ser y estar vivos, con aquello que es la fuente de nuestro crecimiento, transformación y creatividad.  En cierto sentido la automatización representa una etapa en el desarrollo, un etapa necesaria que va de la mano con el establecimiento de la identidad del ego y que por motivos funcionales funciona, sin embargo si nos quedamos ahí o lo confundamos con nuestra naturaleza esencial con el mundo de imágenes, en vez de la experiencia directa y personal, nos hemos perdido a nosotros mismos.

Algunas personas se mantienen más permeables al asombro, a momento presente de la soma percibida directamente, mientras que otras personas se vuelven más rígidas dentro de patrones impuestos por el mundo externo que luego internalizan.  Una gran parte de la armadura rígida y los patrones inmóviles se establecen debido al trauma de distintos tipos— que en muchos caso varía de hermano en hermano en la misma familia, cada uno experimentado la circunstancias por sus propios filtros, así que existe un aspecto subjetivo, particular al carácter de cada individuo y sus propias sensibilidades y condicionamiento e inclusive de experiencias prenatales y del mismo nacimiento.

Pues, cuál es el motivo por el cual huimos de esta apertura?  El miedo a lo desconocido, lo que no tiene mapas, por el miedo a encontrarnos con el dolor, y porque estamos tan ocupados viviendo desde los "circuitos" de la supervivencia, y desde el cuerpo de "supervivencia",  es peligroso ir más despacio, todo se vuelve una cuestión de pelear (para destruir o repeler el peligro), huir (para alejarnos del peligro) o congelarse (para que el peligro piense que ya estamos muertos y no somos nada de interés).

¿Cuáles son algunas de las llaves para abrir la puerta a asombroso, siempre nuevo mundo de la soma?

1.  La respiración

2. Micromovimentos

3. El escaneo del cuerpo para aumentar la percepción de sensaciones en el cuerpo

4. El sonido

5. El movimiento ultra lento

Estas nos puede servir para aumentar nuestra abilidad de percibir la danza de la vida dentro de nosotros, es danza que somos.

"Soma is a Greek word that, from Hesiod onward, has meant "living body." This living, self-sensing, internalized perception of oneself is radically different from the externalized perception of what we call a "body..."" —Thomas Hanna, "Somatics"

“The fluid presence in our bodies is our fundamental environment; we are the moving water brought to land”  —Emilie Conrad. “Life on Land”. 

The soma is the "living body" and somatics is cultivating the direct experience of the living body, of life's body as Thomas Hanna called it, that which you are as an embodied being.  It has been called primary experience.  And since life is movement, dance can be thought of as the first art, the art which is intrinsic to our being alive.  I think Emilie Conrad masterfully called it, the soma, life's body, the dance of the dance.

How can we encounter this world of the dance's dance, of life's body, of primary experience?  We are in a sense speaking of something that is early and intrinsic and so seems to escape our daily awareness, it is implicitly present within us at all times, but we do not necesarily participate fully.  In fact we may be dedicating most of our time to looking the other way—automating our actions, becoming unconscious of our movement so that we can "function" and concentrate on other things.  This is how we are trained in school for the most part, for rote function. While this has some utility, it also may be at the cost of cutting us off from the very fount of our being, the very root of our life force, the very wonder of being alive, the very source of further growth, transformation and creativity.  In some ways this automation is a stage of development, a necesary stage that you could say goes hand in hand with the development of the ego identity for functional reasons it works, however if we stay there if we confuse or lose our essential nature with or to the world of images, rather than direct and personal experience, we have lost ourselves.

Some people remain more porous to wonder, to the present moment of the felt soma, while others become more rigidified in the patterning imposed upon them from the outside, which is then internalized.  Much of the most rigid armoring and patterning is created by trauma, it may be of many different kinds, and often times sibblings from the same family may experience circustances quite differently, so there is a subjective, particular aspect to it that has to do with individual character, sensitivities and conditioning, including prenatal and birth experiences.

So, why do we often find ourselves running the other way? For fear of the unknown, the uncharted, for fear of encountering pain, and because we are busy living from our survival circuitry, and from survival's body perspective, there is nothing to be gained from slowing down, it is all about fight (to destroy the threat) or flight (to escape the threat) or freeze (or to make the threat believe we are dead already and of no possible interest).


What are some of keys to open the door to the wondrous, ever new world of soma?


1.  The breath

2. Micromovements

3. Body scanning to increase perception of sensation in the body

4. Sound

5. Ultra slow motion movement

These can all serve to enhance our ability to perceive the dance of life within us, that dance that is us.

Polaridades - Polarities

"Polaridad: La posesión o manifestación de dos atributos, tendencias o principios opuestos."

Trabajar con polaridades en el interés de jugar con ellos y despertarse a sus cualidades, habitarlos desde un lugar de conciencia y como un recurso, se vuelve un área muy fértil para la indagación en la danza somática y expresiva.

Por la forma natural en la cual funcionan nuestros sentidos, identificamos y discernimos nuestra experiencia por su contraste con otra experiencia, su pouesto, o su polaridad.  Conocemos arriba por se difiere de abajo, derecha se distingue de izquierda, caliente de frío, suave de duro por sus grados de diferencia el uno del otro.

Oposición, polaridad, crea tensión, y puede convertirse en una tensión dinámica y vital que incluye a las dos cualidades, en vez de uno por encima de otro.

En la clase en lunes, después del calentamiento en nuestros espacios personales (kinesperio) y nuestro entorno, tomamos metáforas de movimiento, levantarse y caerse, abrir y cerrar, con las cualidades adicionales de ternura y fuerza como el punto de partida para nuestra exploración en danza.

"Polarity: The possession or manifestation of two opposing attributes, tendencies or principles." 

Working with polarities in order to play with them and become awake to them, to inhabit them from a place of awareness and as a resource, becomes a very fruitful area of inquiry in somatic dance.

By the nature of the way our senses work, we identify and discern our experience by its contrast with something else, it's opposite, or its polarity. We know up as different from down, right from left, hot from cold, soft from hard by their varying degrees of oppositeness.

Oppositeness, polarity, creates tension, it can be a very vital and lively and creative tension that includes both, rather than one over the other.

In Monday's class, after a warm-up to personal space (kinesphere) and environment, we took the movement metaphores of rise and fall, open and close, with the added qualities of tenderness and strength as the taking off point for our exploration in dance.