Ecological Bodies

“Why should indigeneity be connected to injustice? That shouldn’t be the connection. The connection should be that indigeneity is the way in which we can connect ourselves, deeply; a way in which we can know place and space, deeply; and a way in which we can experience the medicines of peoples who have been caretakers and stewards, forever.” - Jack Gray 

During Gardening and Mindfulness Practice, we sought flow in a Montessori-like backyard gardening situation. We applied Axis Syllabus principles to the labor of gardening, to cultivate more easeful, mindful, and focused labor, with the option to step outside of the practice to observe the score. 

Notes from Sculptures of Attention with Zena Bibler… 

Surfing practice: Move as if “everything is foot.” Every part of you is a surface to push off from. Find a flow of momentum such that no energy is wasted. All energy is part of a continuum of movement, and allow that energy to reveal where its going. 

Move on your 2nd impulse, not your first. With that comes questions. What is an impulse?…a sneeze? a yawn? Honor the score as a dance, and really expand your perception of what is contained in a dance.  

A description of “dancing”: The act of experiencing and generating (at the same time) as a way of locating. In space. In time. 

Leaning further into anthropocene: Nothing that’s done can be undone. Dances cannot escape the space they are danced in. The history of a space, the politics of space, and all that has come before a particular dance, cannot be undone or erased through dancing. 

The term “ecological” has been defined as “relating to or concerned with the relation of living organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.” In the spirit of being in relation to all that we’re swirling in right now, we (Emily and Hannah) are sharing some of the conversations and ideas we’ve had leading up to Ecological Bodies about articles that we’ve been reading and thinking about. Everything is in relation to everything…

“The body is not a thing, an anatomical substrate; it is a performance, a function, a behavior. Soul does not have a body, it is body; body does not have a soul, it is soul...Even your skeleton and brain (organs that for example are nearly structuralized to death and physical substance) are ‘on the move’, are processes. I learnt from the embryo: Motion is primary, form is secondary. Forms comes out of motion (and not the reverse as reductionistic thinkers always propagate) and in that motion a behavior is performed.”

Jaap van der Wal, MD, PhD. in  “The Embryo in Us – A phenomenological Search for Soul and Consciousness in the prenatal Body”  

EJ: [Jumping right in] For me, this article brings to mind how we are indoctrinated in this capitalist society with the concept of a top down approach--the common perception that our brain is responsible and guiding the rest of our body. This brings up the parallel idea that political leaders and those with the most capital are responsible and dictating the rest of society.

Jaap Van Der Wal proposes a reorganization in the way we understand leadership in our body. Instead of the brain guiding the other parts, he proposes autonomy in each region, and each region being in conversation. He proposes that the brain exists in tangent with all other organs, not superior to them. I love this because it makes me think of our socio-political structure as well. If we didn’t think of our bodies as hierarchical structures that are predisposed by genes, could we think of our place in the world less vertically organized? I know that is a lofty statement. How can power be redistributed to better empower individuals? This can extend beyond physiology.

All the readings that have directly informed Ecological Bodies and this week of inquiry we’re facilitating seem to deal heavily with the concept of noticing what the fuck is happening around you. We (you and I) are all part of these systems and play into them in many ways. How do we actually observe what is going on? This is the question that keeps coming to my head. So often we go through participating with the status quo, oblivious to how we are contributing to the hierarchies around us. What is the space that allows questioning and reconsidering, and how is this cultivated?

HK: This article that you shared by Aurora Westfelt we discussed, “From oppressive structures on the dance floor to a world of dance,” is reaching for it. Like Westfelt, we have a lot of reservations about the dominate culture of the Contact Improvisation, and many other somatic practices. I appreciate her deconstruction of CI as a glorified “safer space, in which we can be physically close.” She’s speaking from her lived experience and identity, while doing her best to name the fact that we cannot step out of our positioning on the “capitalist, sexist, racist, hierarchical systems we are immersed in” when we step into these dance spaces. (FYI: For a deeper dive into this subject, I also recommend this article from an issue of Contact Quarterly. It features a conversation between mayfield brooks and Karen Nelson about IWB, improvising while black.)

However, I also have questions about the theory Westfeld brings in at the end of her article, as she seeks a way forward, so to speak. While the theorists she references--Nina Björk and Judith Butler--are wonderful, accessibility to this type of theoretical rhetoric is still an issue. We have to question socially predetermined realities of “what this is about and for whom,” as Westfeld writes. This includes the types of knowledge and theory we intake, given our identities--even the articles we’re talking about now!

I also find this article by Anna Kegler instructive, particularly as it gestures to the notion of the “spectrum” of oppression. She’s specifically talking about racism in this article.

So, if I believe there’s a binary of oppressiveness, and if I believe I’m on the “not-oppressive” side of the binary, then I can just opt out of doing that work. Yay me! But, if I see myself as sitting on as spectrum of oppressiveness, I have no choice but to acknowledge this positioning, my implicit participation in hierarchies of oppression, and I must keep listening, keep noticing repercussions, keep questioning, keep adjusting, keep decentering myself and my experience, keep modifying thought patterns, and keep modifying behavior, etc.

This idea of a spectrum also brings me back around to the import of practice and process. I cannot shake the thought that “products” and “outcomes” are so often dictated or mandated by the constraints of our capitalist society, and perhaps every outcome we create for ourselves, every commodity we create (even our dances!), and every idea we share is actually just a forced moment in time. In talking with my collaborator Zena Bibler about this phenomenon, she aptly described it as “artificial freeze-frames within more continuous time.” Every moment is a point on a lifelong spectrum of learning, and learning from that learning.

And, maybe “learning” is actually the REAL WORK, not creating products and outcomes. Maybe this, in turn, becomes an invitation to change how we weigh everything in our lives: to “redistribute” (as you’ve mentioned above), to loosen our desperate grasp on some things, especially on our narrow definitions for the world around us, and to hold more tightly to other things--which we might be overlooking. In my lived experience right now, and what I’m working with, these ideas also feel resonant.  

EJ: I also really appreciate the way Anna Kegler describes the danger of binary thinking. Thinking in binary dismisses and disregards all the space in between [and assumes that the two poles have value as foundational categories]. That space of uncertainty that requires self-reflection and consideration of multiple experiences colliding. Why is it that we are so uncomfortable with uncertainty?

Near the end of Jaap van der Wal’s interview he talks about addiction to causality. As humans we easily attach to a reason or an excuse for the way something is, whether this be in our own bodies, or in society at large. I’ve so often heard and read sentiments like, “I have this condition, because it runs in my family” or “discrimination happens because of the history in our country.” Those overly simplified causes and outcomes make us less individually accountable. Sure, those reasons might contribute to the current situation, but other factors, including those we are personally responsible for and participate in, also need to be considered.

Jaap van der Wal primarily discusses the fascination with genes, and how we point to our inherited DNA--structures as causes for anatomical, physiological, and psychological attributes. In the scientific community, my understanding is, embryology and genetics were, at one point, part of the same field. When genome mapping took off, the field split and genetics was given precedence and more funding because of the measurable  answers that were coming out of that research.

Now, these fields are merging again. How genes are expressed has much to do with environment, and embryological development, and life post-embryo. Phenomena are a result of various causes and conditions intersecting.

HK: I love it! I’m thinking about your question: “Why is it that we are so uncomfortable with uncertainty?” I wonder if it's because we’ve all internalized a twisted definition of comfort as something imperative to our lives. Uncertainty seems to be the thing that sustains life! Your question also brings me back to some of the conversations we’ve been having around naming--specifically in relationship to Luciana Achugar’s dance research through the Pleasure Project--and what it means to revel in the uncertainty about what surrounds us.

Achugar says that “naming” (e.g. that is a tomato!) without “understanding” (e.g. what is a tomato?) is a “colonial act” that halts our experiencing. Perhaps the act of “naming” something as a discrete and comprehensive phenomenon is a way to hold onto expertise, power, influence, and capital--not to mention, a way to create chasms of distance between human lived experience and everything surrounding it. Kegler is really getting at this in her aforementioned article, where she discusses the way specific terminology persists in coddling white experience.

Someone, though I can't remember who (maybe Chrysa Parkinson), said: “If I am over comprehended and over identified I can only be one thing.” Jaap van der Wal would say that we’ve been over comprehended and over identified as beings that exist in and “own” their bodies--bodies are a means to an end. In light of this, he argues that we--our very souls--are our bodies. Everything that happens to our bodies, happens to our souls, and if this is true, then life is not a means to an end!

In this way, I suppose we are working to redefine a sort of value system for ourselves, less predicated in fixity, more in fluidity, less comfortable with stability, more interested in learning from uncertainty. I’m excited where these ideas will take us, and how they will be informed and transformed as we continue researching and sharing and listening and adjusting to everything (in relation to everything!).

REFERENCES:

http://www.portlandanthroposophy.org/the-embryo-in-us-article

https://www.movementactivism.com/single-post/2017/06/01/From-oppressive-structures-on-the-dance-floor-to-a-world-of-dance

https://contactquarterly.com/cq/article-gallery/view/IWBcompressed.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-kegler/the-sugarcoated-language-of-white-fragility_b_10909350.html

https://www.liberatedbody.com/podcast/?category=Embryology

http://www.lachugar.org/the-pleasure-project/

This is a comprehensive illustration of the Perceptual-Response Cycle, via Body-Mind Centering and illustrated by Dora Gaskill for Wilding Walk: 

According to the Perceptual-Response Cycle, before human beings even engage in sensory input, a “pre-sensory motor focus” already exists and is at play. 

In essence, human experience (dating back to our embryonic development!) is used to inform what sensory experiences humans continue to seek out in the world.  

However, decision-making power gives human beings agency to interrupt the Perceptual-Response Cycle.