How do you feel in these times of war and climate catastrophe, social polarisation? Do you try to still function and go to your yoga class? I just have been to one, being there with 15 people all doing the same movement. On one hand I felt great to just try to follow, on the other hand I didn´t really felt met or seen who am I? I was wondering why do people join a yoga class? What is their intention? When I have been an adolescent Yoga still was something unfamiliar and my first yoga class was with an old indian men offering some Hatha yoga. That was great and I bought his book. Now Yoga is so commonly spread and everyday I see people carrying their yogamats around. As a somatic professional and dance artist I am wondering about what Critical somatics can offer to people in these challenging times. I consciously use the term Critical somatics as the capitalistic system found somatic as their new profiting machine. Therefore I now encounter many somatic coaches and professionals without any reference to where they had been studying and what is their mission. It seems like yoga, somatics seems to sell well. Do you think actually I want to join the profiting machine in writing this blog? Since I ask @Maike Weber (thank you) to create my new website I wanted to start writing a blog and somehow this year went to quickly without me finding a quiet moment to write or I continued to write on my Instagram channel.
My objectives for inviting people to experience somatic practices is that they come into contact with themselves, that through grounding and embedding the practice within a social context, they feel their agency and they feel empowered to act.
I feel the urgency of our time and I witness many people being paralyzed and also trying to blend over feeling this time and the current situation. I also have this of course. People have with different strategies in surviving but also in bypassing what needs to be done right now.
I just share one of those experiences. One of my home practices has been Contact Improvisation. In summer I have been part of the Freiburg Teachers meeting, I was really waiting to meet and exchange and think about how to continue practicing CI and yet discussing about climate change, but there was not enough interest from the majority of teachers spending time in the teachers meeting, although I took a 5 min slot to speak about that and offered a lab during the festival. I also got caught in being part of the awareness team and the kids and family team and in trying to organize support and safe space against a transphobic incidence during the festival. I came back exhausted and disilusioned with exceptions of course- the great F.L.I.N.T.A. solidarity group- hugs to them right now, missing you. Of course dancing and enjoying life is so important and great, I also used to love it and I also need it to survivee, nevertheless it is focused on the short term outcome, the Dopamine rise, facing the shit that is happening in the world needs to be done as well in order to change it now before it is too late. So the question is than how to stay embodied, feeling the shit and being ready to act and to organize? What is your practice to come into contact with yourself, the moment, to have time to connect, regenerate and find back agency and power? My practices are Body-Mind Centering®, Authentic Movement and Contact Improvisation, maybe you have different ones, than go for it.
The next times I will spend some time writing about Somatic Bypassing and Critical somatics.
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