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PART 1

EXPLORATION PERIOD: 16.04.2021 - 25.05.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: The focus during this period was on the experience of back-ness in movement. We each undertook this exploration separately over the period. Below are some of the individual exercises / scores / questions / prompt that we used for activating the exploration or that emerged through the enquir

* How do you take back-ness into movement?

* Moving around the room walking backwards. Avoiding the temptation to rotate the head to see where one is going. What other senses become activated in the act of walking backwards? What is your range of awareness in degrees? Taking this exercise outside – into the woods or the park. Practising in different weather, or at different times of day.

* Resisting the impulse to move. Going with the impulse to move.

* Moving with the impulse, letting the body follow the impulse, find its way.

* Attending to the relation of movement and a sense of time – where is one’s attention, in the future, present or the past.

* Dropping into the situation. Unhurry, unrush.

* Exploring a mode of slowness that does not necessarily describe the speed; slow as an experiential quality not velocity, intensity rather than extensity.

* Walking forwards – taking awareness in the back whilst moving forwards. Testing out different speeds.

* Walking forwards – taking awareness in the front whilst moving forwards. Testing out different speeds.

* Walking forwards – awareness on listening

* Experimenting with the eyes

- Looking forwards, reaching towards.

- Dropping back, receiving, let the light arrive.

- Testing the middle way.

- Walking forwards, eyes closed.

- Walking backwards, eyes closed.

* Sensorial shifts.

* Rest / reset.

* Walking: switching between walking forwards and walking backwards. Varying the speed. At moments, coming to still. Varying the direction of movement. Varying the place of awareness in the body. Activating/deactivating the eyes. Activating the presence of the other senses.

* Dwelling. Residing. Inhabiting.

* How are seeing and hearing co-working in walking?

* How are seeing, hearing, touching and gravitation co-working in moving around? 

* Walking forwards with attention to the back. Taking your back for a walk. Imagining a soft palm between the shoulder blades.

* Moving through and with the back, bringing attention to the unseen surfaces of the back and the axial articulations of the spine.

* Exploring how the skin as surface and spine as axis are co-working in a  back-orientated moving-around. 

* Exploring and moving with axial and surfaces technologies of the back allowing arms to navigate, gesture, express, connect, touch and legs to anchor and transport.

* Letting muscles release bones, so the skeletal system is free to articulate and expand bodily movement and breath.

* Softening back-front. Softening ear-eye. Softening breath.

* Moving through the back, as an activity of listening to tiny micro details of articulating, dropping, twisting, turning, tilting, pulsing, resisting, yielding.

* Moving through the back is a quiet dance?

  Moving through the back is a wild wayward dance?

  Moving through the back is a mysterious dark dance?

* Allowing the breath to move. Activating breath to move the sides of the body, to move from a sense of side-ness and around-ness.

PART 2

EXPLORATION DATE: 24.05.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was to come together to share in response to the preceding period of live exploration (between 16.04.2021 - 24.05.2021) where we had both been investigating 'back-ness in transition' through individual enquiry. The session was structured through a series of timed activities, where we took turns to speak and listen.

STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE

0. Tuning in/Arrival - Lying-on-the-back, reconnecting with the body and the sense of practice [20 mins]

1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]

3. Speaking/listening: back-to-back [3 mins each]

4. Speaking/listening: Back-to-back [10 mins each]

'SCORE' FOR CONVERSATION PRACTICE

- Take a moment to tune into the chosen object/focus of exploration – this could involve a period of recollection, or looking back at notes, sketches, wordings that relate to the object/focus of exploration, or by noting/drawing/diagramming.

- Connect and try to stay connected with your direct experience.

- Feel free to speak before knowing what it is that you want to say – thinking through speaking.

- Feel free to speak in single words, partial phrases, half sentences, and thought fragments.

- Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment – for wrestling with, stumbling and falling over one’s words.

- Consider different speeds and rhythms. Allow for silence.

- Approach listening to the other as an aesthetic practice.

4b.

3a.

3b.

4a.

PART 3

INTERIM PERIOD

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Transcription and distillation of resulting text through marking/highlighting, undertaken separately.

EXERCISES/SCORES

I made some notes, but I can feel that my mind is not knowing where to start, which is interesting. These last two weeks I have been swimming a lot and so I have been taking the back into the pool with me, and revisiting some things around how it is to swim in relationship to the back and if I am thinking of crawl, like front crawling, and so that the vertical axis is tilted 90 degrees into the horizontal place ... and this sense of not having gravity acting on the body in the same way, in the water … and being totally immersed. There is something around how that also orientates, somehow a different orientation, and relationship to gravity … which is obvious but every time I am there, I often question why is it that I have to swim, or like to swim or need to swim. And there is a kind of releasing of gravity, or releasing of weight, but there is such a backness to it, especially with the crawl. So I am thinking about front crawl and this twisting right and left and how the body sort of coordinates that. It has to coordinate the breathing and the limbs and the swing and the kick. There are all these different, in a way, rhythms, and very … I mean I was just going up and down, right and left, breath in and out, kicking – lots of one two one two, but how all that coordinates. It is really into the back, I am now thinking of the back in terms of this all roundness sense of the backthat we were talking about last time. I think that this gets really accentuated in swimming, in the water. And I am thinking pool, because that is where I can just go up and down and somehow bring my attention to it. There is something about the front crawling, and I was thinking about on all fours, literally front crawling, on my hands and knees or crawling back. I had also made some notes but as soon as you are speaking it brings more things to the forefront. I have been activating this attention to the back whilst walking, but doing it almost as a remedy to the forwardness of my attention, in a way. So the places where I have most been activating it wasn’t setting out to really think about this, or to experiment with this, but it was more out of a necessity, recognizing that I was pushing into the next thing. I was going on a walk round the park but already thinking about the future, already in the thing that was coming next. And I was trying to pull back into the back as a way of pulling away from the future actually, pulling into not quite present experience, but pulling, trying to counteract or activate an antidote to that next, next, next, next, kind of feeling that I was having in the body. And this was interesting because I think that there was something to do with the forward trajectory of this next, next, next, felt very shallow and narrow, and then as soon as pulled back it opened out into a much more spacious, expanded feeling that we have been talking about before. But the thing that comes strong now as you have been talking is that the register of experience that I was moving with was still thinking in this clearly defined sense that there is a front and there is a back. And that the transition, the transition was from frontal to the back, on a single plane, like it was pulling back … and this movement that you are describing with the front crawl, it is much more mobile, it is much more dynamic, where are the edges … yes, the back as a dynamic field is still this area of challenge that I am experiencing in the experiments that I have been doing. How to activate the back as a dynamic field rather than as this still, flat surface, where it is either the front or it is the back, and there is this movement from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition, which is what I was definitely exploring. But it felt like it was a scan as a single plane, back to the back as a single surface, drawing the attention back. This planar – it links up with … I really enjoy these binaries, back/front … maybe we have talked about this before … because they identify something and then you have to volumise it again. There is … if I was … what is it to talk or even to think, from the back? I am still thinking it is almost like pulling thinking, thinking coming from the back, but because it has to be voiced, language, it feels frontal I suppose … even thinking, as soon as I am thinking I am pulled up and forwards.And I think, because of my ears, being on my own, thinking and reflecting, it is very messy and murky. There is a sense of being kind of disorientated and not clarifying. There is some murkiness in the back in relationship, less in relationship to the body, but in relationship to thinking. I find this interesting and sometimes disorientating, it just won’t crystallize. Different kinds of thinking perhaps. And again, not front/back, it is too binary. But there is a backness, and something like … you had this lovely phrase, this sense of future leaning which is … future leaning because of this backness conversation we are having, it does not make sense to me. This idea of the future that I have been working with, this future behind is unseen. But future leaning, I cannot help in my Western cultural … that I will go like this. So future leaning has this dorsal quality or a dorsal tilt. I like how it is in the language, in the conversation, it is quite confusing. If I would say to someone future leaning, it feels falling forwards in Western culture anyway. Something more … murky back thinking. Perhaps also feeling, I am interested in that, and I think I am often in that state, but it is disturbing. I would prefer to be crystal clear and sharp and spiky rather than in the murky. It is interesting, there is a kind of resistance to it. I have re-found this, Louise Bourgeois, someone who has written on her about the three horizontals.

And they are talking about how lying is, this idea of lying down being horizontal, surrender, giving up, retreat, passive, which some of the things we are said it doesn’t have to be, it can be active. Surrender or give up. These things can have a negative connotation. And that floating and hanging are states of ambivalence. I was thinking of swimming so this is interesting. And the idea of the upright body, more about in a way, stating or wanting to communicate. This is not quite right, I think I am filling that in. I thought that this relation between the three horizontals – the floating and lying down, passivity and activity and ideas of surrender, they … there is lots of darkness, dark things now. And I think I often resist those kinds of … though it intrigues me. This future leaning I find very fascinating. A colleague of mine said he discovered walking backwards, moving backwards, walking backwards, has links to longevity, to longer life. I thought that is useful. And then I caught something on the radio the other day about balancing on one leg and walking backwards, all those things have a link to longer life ... very simply what the body has to do, what the breathing has to do in order to stay on one leg or move backwards or orientate differently … I found them funny things in a way but there is something about how you are moving through life. Whether it is walking or swimming or thinking – it is interesting. Something about time, this sensation of time, I found really curious. With the front and the back and how this can create different sensations of duration and time. Then because 8 minutes has not finished I will just jump in, I have been gathering, I think last week, or last time, I did the back bone, and I was doing something with the students. Back bone. Back ground. Back track. I am curious, and again it is falling into these binaries, but how these binaries they do create a field, a dynamic field. There is so much isn’t there. I was thinking as you were talking, I have been trying to do some specific experiments when I was walking in the park and some of them connect to this walking backwards a little as well. Maybe also in a way trying to complicate or unsettle this sense of the binary between the front and the back. So one of the experiments was walking forwards but taking the experience or the awareness into the back – so the directional trajectory is forward but the attention is in the back. And then trying to explore different speeds – because in my enquiry so far there is this correlation between backness and slowness, and I am not sure how much this is a correlation or whether it is a habit. When I am taking the attention to the back lying down, there is something of stilling and settling, and these kinds of association of non-movement, passivity, inaction … so there is this enquiry around how and whether it is possible to have this quality of backness but in movement, or in activity? So this kind of almost tension between specifically moving forward but holding the attention towards the back – so there is this kind of pull in a way. And then also really thinking about the eyes again within that same gesture. So moving forward but with the attention in the back but with the eyes looking, and then with the eyes just being open, quite receptive, and then with the eyes closed. All these variables within small sequences. And within some senses I have not really dwelt within these practices – it was more like a kind of sampling. Wow – already there is this … like the transition that we were activating between lying to standing, I was interested in this transition from the front to the back in a vertical orientation and within that the nuance between directional frontality, frontality and backness in a directional sense – moving forward, moving backwards; awareness forward, awareness to the back; looking forward, looking more receptively. And the correlation between direction and awareness and sight in a way. And then moving to walking backwards actually, walking backwards but to begin with attention still remaining frontal. So this was a really different pull between these two almost like different, not quite perspectives, more like energies, almost like pulls, in a way. So this walking backwards but with the eyes oriented forwards, almost had this sense of reversal. Like a sense of time – going backwards, moving back in time. I am moving away from the future in a sense. And to walk backwards but with the attention also in the back – this was very interesting. It felt like leaning into a sense of spaciousness or being held by something beyond me. Like the forward facing, forward attention and moving back was a kind of push/pull dynamic but with this one it was much more like, it felt as if I could fall but it was cushioned by air, or be something … and then again this experimentation with the eyes, closing the eyes and opening the eyes. Yes I was struck by the range of variation actually. And then this movement into wider sensorial shifts, so rather than focusing on sight, to really activate listening again. I realized I was doing this practice but with eyesight, with looking being the dominant sense. And then to take it into listening, this relation between listening and backness – feels very close somehow. Almost listening became the cushion I could lean back into – it wasn’t air it was listening, it created a texture that could support me as I was moving backwards.But this was this strong … connected to what you were talking about in relation to longevity, and time and life … this strong sense of reversal. I know we have talked about before the sense of movement and then a reversal of action, but this walking backwards had this sense of, it wasn’t just that I was walking backwards but it felt that I was undoing forward movement. It was as if I had switched the video to rewind or something. So yes this interesting, whether to stay with this experiment, whether you know we were talking about the quality of the back being this negative, this un- or this not or non- or this opposite of the forward or frontal or whether this is just a habit of my thinking to think of it only as a reversal of going forward, or whether with more attention a different kind of experiential sensation shows itself which might not just be the opposite of this going forward. But this recognition of this pull of the frontal, the pull of next, the pull of the future, the pull of the eyes, all the time this pulling out of the present, into this … this pull of frontality in a way. But this transition between the two being an interesting space. So rather than it being a deficit or a failure within the enquiry, to look at the transition as an active shift of awareness, between, the range of awareness that opens up. This idea of different pulls and forces that are acting on us, or I suppose reconfiguring how we moving brings attention to these pulls or forces that act upon us or can be activated or isolated. I have noticed for a quite a while that when I am walking on the street or into uni or in places where there is a little bit of space that I will often close my eyes for a few seconds and keep walking. Knowing that you are not going to bump into something, there is something very enjoyable in just being on the street and having your eyes closed for a while, whilst trying not to disturb the rhythm that I was in. Talking about these pulls. I am thinking about being on all fours, it is another way of releasing the weight, it is more distributed and how backness comes into this … I think that one of the things that I have been interested in within this block if you like is how some of the previous explorations become folded in and also transformed in this shift to standing and moving. And how some of the qualities that we explored in relation to lying down – the backness in lying down around release and passivity, and I suppose in a way the domain of the parasympathetic system … what happens when that moves into movement and does movement always necessitate a shift, and is it possible to move into movement with a quality of backness or with the qualities almost of the rest and digest mode, in movement. Or does movement necessitate a different activation? And speech also, this thing that you were saying earlier about talking and thinking from the back, how can that be practiced? Because I notice if I am walking there are qualities of thinking that have much more of a sense of this backness, and qualities of talking, but I know there is this tendency of leaning forward, of forward leaning, this urgency almost, like a, maybe even a bit graspy, grasping for somethingrather than letting it come. This letting, this letting aspect of the back seems important. And then I am also thinking about this, as I am doing with the screen, the rotation of the head … so this rotation from a vertical position and what this does, so as I rotate my head but my body stays facing backwards, what that does to the sensibility. The turning of the head is very particular, because I suppose there is the sense of the forwards and the backwards, it reminds also of all those myths, of not looking back, not looking back. That not-ness. Looking away from the back. You were talking about this walking, this verticality, and the frontality and the backness and the next, next, next,and it feels sometimes to move forwards to the next with the backness, this grasping, it feels like I have a desire to project something, projecting, whereas backwards there is a lot of acceptance, listening, allowing things in. A connection with the environment. This forwards and the next, next, I can feel it, it is a kind of desire, projecting onto something that isn’t there yet. And I love coming down to crawling, it is partly to do with how the back physically feels, but there is also something, it is surrender, it is not giving up it is coming down to a more child, animal, low to the ground, it is a kind of safe space, it removes any sense of having to talk or I think a kind of animal enjoyment in that and feeling the weight and the shoulder blades moving in a different way. Even conjuring up images of cats, dogs, horses, but maybe particularly cats. There is something interesting in how … perhaps becoming other, sensing another being a human being in another way. Whether it is in the water or in relationship to other kinds of animals or ways of being, a watery human and then on all fours. I like this mix of front crawling, down animal-like, it activates another kind of sense of one self as human. And it is interesting crawling, also to crawl backwards, even in that non-vertical axis situation with the spine in its horizontal, there is still a sense of difference crawling forwards and crawling backwards. It activates a different feeling of backness … I am thinking now about what you said before about the reversal of things, it made me think of unraveling, there is, because in walking backwards the whole thing has to reconfigure, the pelvis, the limbs, everything has to operate slightly differently. It has to be reconfigured. In that physical sense, there is an unraveling. And that reconfiguring of how muscles and joints and things connect with each other,it is sometimes tricky and disorientates, unraveling of the habit perhaps, it is a surprisingly fresh perspective. It shifts your perspective. But at the same time, I have this sensation sometimes on my bike or even with swimming, this sensation for, this desire for, it is different from the next, next, next, a sense of pure glee in speed, which is hard backwards unless you just fall. There is something about having to see to race forward – to run, to cycle. To activate that energy in terms of speed. I can feel this in talking … I can understand why I sometimes need to cycle fast, there is that, especially cycling downhill which is a kind of falling as well as a forward motion. It is a different kind of territory, but something about speed. As you were talking one of the things that came through very strongly was a sense of clockwise and anticlockwise, and about operating anticlockwise. I am thinking of the movement of the hips and the joints, the hips in particular, I think when I was thinking about, when I was practicing walking backwards, it is interesting that my main concern was around almost, my main concern was around the quality of attention and of awareness but it was still, it was still in the head in a way, that there was this perceptual awareness that is still oriented in the head and the sense organs of the head – and listening, sight. And as a consequence, not even noticing actually, that there is something happening in the muscular and skeletal system which is counter or opposite to habit and this moving backwards, this stepping backwards, taking the joints in the direction that they don’t very often travel in actually. What an operation that is actually. The habits of movement. So far I am thinking of them in terms of frontality of perception, and perhaps not so much that the shift from the frontal to the dorsal creates a different skeletal-muscular relationship in a way. This thing that you were saying before about how we move through the world – how does this shift of orientation within the body affect we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world? The awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit, but also the pleasure in this. I am thinking about swimming too, there is something that is … the limbs, and the legs, and the body moves in a way that facilitates movement but it is not the way that the body walks. The dominance of walking actually – as our dominant movement orientation through the world and as we move to these different possibilities of swimming and crawling and dragging the body – how it activates different kinds of configurations and relationships of the body, and different kinds of sense. I am thinking, talking about this turning of the head, which was reminding me of Feldenkrais practice … a practice of just exploring the movement of the turning of the head and how much of the body participates in that movement, and sometimes, there is a sense in my experience that the eyes, the eyes do a lot of the work, they want to lead it, the head and the eyes are dominant, dominate that movement. And there is something about the different parts of the back that are activated – the cervical spine and the thoracic spine, and in particular the thoracic spine feels quite an unknown territory to me, and to really explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and in being in the world. This sense, this notion you were saying about our being in the world, our ways of moving and being in the world are shaped by the ways that we move and be in the world.So, this impact of such a strong orientation of frontality, and the sense of dorsality as binary, or almost like the segmentation of the body, how this then shaped the world that one encounters. How might participation of a fuller range of the body change the sense of connection and what worlds start to emerge in a way? And then, maybe thinking a little about Feldenkrais practices, what is participating that doesn’t need to participate. Maybe I would come back to a sense of the eyes, or to thought actually, does thought, does thinking always need to participate in this action? And what does the thinking participating in action do? So something about toning down or letting go of certain tendencies and habits, not to switch from them but to just change the balance, recalibrate the balance in a way. And something also, you were saying about desire, but also this sense of pleasure, this pleasure, a pleasure in moving backwards, a pleasure in being and moving, a very elemental pleasure of almost like … the pleasure of cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment, where sometimes I think in the frontal mode I sort of skate over the surface of the environment to get somewhere.And just this, this deep pleasure that comes from, I mean, this is also there in swimming right, this pleasure of participating with the water to make the movement happen.You really feel, you can really feel.

I made some notes, but I can feel that my mind is not knowing where to start, which is interesting. These last two weeks I have been swimming a lot and so I have been taking the back into the pool with me, and revisiting some things around how it is to swim in relationship to the back and if I am thinking of crawl, like front crawling, and so that the vertical axis is tilted 90 degrees into the horizontal place ... and this sense of not having gravity acting on the body in the same way, in the water … and being totally immersed. There is something around how that also orientates, somehow a different orientation, and relationship to gravity … which is obvious but every time I am there, I often question why is it that I have to swim, or like to swim or need to swim. And there is a kind of releasing of gravity, or releasing of weight, but there is such a backness to it, especially with the crawl. So I am thinking about front crawl and this twisting right and left and how the body sort of coordinates that. It has to coordinate the breathing and the limbs and the swing and the kick. There are all these different, in a way, rhythms, and very … I mean I was just going up and down, right and left, breath in and out, kicking – lots of one two one two, but how all that coordinates. It is really into the back, I am now thinking of the back in terms of this all roundness sense of the backthat we were talking about last time. I think that this gets really accentuated in swimming, in the water. And I am thinking pool, because that is where I can just go up and down and somehow bring my attention to it. There is something about the front crawling, and I was thinking about on all fours, literally front crawling, on my hands and knees or crawling back. I had also made some notes but as soon as you are speaking it brings more things to the forefront. I have been activating this attention to the back whilst walking, but doing it almost as a remedy to the forwardness of my attention, in a way. So the places where I have most been activating it wasn’t setting out to really think about this, or to experiment with this, but it was more out of a necessity, recognizing that I was pushing into the next thing. I was going on a walk round the park but already thinking about the future, already in the thing that was coming next. And I was trying to pull back into the back as a way of pulling away from the future actually, pulling into not quite present experience, but pulling, trying to counteract or activate an antidote to that next, next, next, next, kind of feeling that I was having in the body. And this was interesting because I think that there was something to do with the forward trajectory of this next, next, next, felt very shallow and narrow, and then as soon as pulled back it opened out into a much more spacious, expanded feeling that we have been talking about before. But the thing that comes strong now as you have been talking is that the register of experience that I was moving with was still thinking in this clearly defined sense that there is a front and there is a back. And that the transition, the transition was from frontal to the back, on a single plane, like it was pulling back … and this movement that you are describing with the front crawl, it is much more mobile, it is much more dynamic, where are the edges … yes, the back as a dynamic field is still this area of challenge that I am experiencing in the experiments that I have been doing. How to activate the back as a dynamic field rather than as this still, flat surface, where it is either the front or it is the back, and there isthis movement from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition, which is what I was definitely exploring. But it felt like it was a scan as a single plane, back to the back as a single surface, drawing the attention back. This planar – it links up with … I really enjoy these binaries, back/front … maybe we have talked about this before … because they identify something and then you have to volumise it again. There is … if I was … what is it to talk or even to think, from the back? I am still thinking it is almost like pulling thinking, thinking coming from the back, but because it has to be voiced, language, it feels frontal I suppose … even thinking, as soon as I am thinking I am pulled up and forwards. And I think, because of my ears, being on my own, thinking and reflecting, it is very messy and murky. There is a sense of being kind of disorientated and not clarifying. There is some murkiness in the back in relationship, less in relationship to the body, but in relationship to thinking. I find this interesting and sometimes disorientating, it just won’t crystallize. Different kinds of thinking perhaps. And again, not front/back, it is too binary. But there is a backness, and something like … you had this lovely phrase, this sense of future leaning which is … future leaning because of this backness conversation we are having, it does not make sense to me. This idea of the future that I have been working with, this future behind is unseen. But future leaning, I cannot help in my Western cultural … that I will go like this. So future leaning has this dorsal quality or a dorsal tilt. I like how it is in the language, in the conversation, it is quite confusing. If I would say to someone future leaning, it feels falling forwards in Western culture anyway. Something more … murky back thinking. Perhaps also feeling, I am interested in that, and I think I am often in that state, but it is disturbing. I would prefer to be crystal clear and sharp and spiky rather than in the murky. It is interesting, there is a kind of resistance to it. I have re-found this, Louise Bourgeois, someone who has written on her about the three horizontals.

And they are talking about how lying is, this idea of lying down being horizontal, surrender, giving up, retreat, passive, which some of the things we are said it doesn’t have to be, it can be active. Surrender or give up. These things can have a negative connotation. And that floating and hanging are states of ambivalence. I was thinking of swimming so this is interesting. And the idea of the upright body, more about in a way, stating or wanting to communicate. This is not quite right, I think I am filling that in. I thought that this relation between the three horizontals – the floating and lying down, passivity and activity and ideas of surrender, they … there is lots of darkness, dark things now. And I think I often resist those kinds of … though it intrigues me. This future leaning I find very fascinating. A colleague of mine said he discovered walking backwards, moving backwards, walking backwards, has links to longevity, to longer life. I thought that is useful. And then I caught something on the radio the other day about balancing on one leg and walking backwards, all those things have a link to longer life ... very simply what the body has to do, what the breathing has to do in order to stay on one leg or move backwards or orientate differently … I found them funny things in a way but there is something about how you are moving through life. Whether it is walking or swimming or thinking – it is interesting. Something about time, this sensation of time, I found really curious.With the front and the back and how this can create different sensations of duration and time. Then because 8 minutes has not finished I will just jump in, I have been gathering, I think last week, or last time, I did the back bone, and I was doing something with the students. Back bone. Back ground. Back track. I am curious, and again it is falling into these binaries, but how these binaries they do create a field, a dynamic field. There is so much isn’t there. I was thinking as you were talking, I have been trying to do some specific experiments when I was walking in the park and some of them connect to this walking backwards a little as well. Maybe also in a way trying to complicate or unsettle this sense of the binary between the front and the back. So one of the experiments was walking forwards but taking the experience or the awareness into the back – so the directional trajectory is forward but the attention is in the back. And then trying to explore different speeds – because in my enquiry so far there is this correlation between backness and slowness, and I am not sure how much this is a correlation or whether it is a habit. When I am taking the attention to the back lying down, there is something of stilling and settling, and these kinds of association of non-movement, passivity, inaction … so there is this enquiry around how and whether it is possible to have this quality of backness but in movement, or in activity? So this kind of almost tension between specifically moving forward but holding the attention towards the back – so there is this kind of pull in a way. And then also really thinking about the eyes again within that same gesture. So moving forward but with the attention in the back but with the eyes looking, and then with the eyes just being open, quite receptive, and then with the eyes closed.All these variables within small sequences. And within some senses I have not really dwelt within these practices – it was more like a kind of sampling. Wow – already there is this … like the transition that we were activating between lying to standing, I was interested in this transition from the front to the back in a vertical orientation and within that the nuance between directional frontality, frontality and backness in a directional sense – moving forward, moving backwards; awareness forward, awareness to the back; looking forward, looking more receptively. And the correlation between direction and awareness and sight in a way. And then moving to walking backwards actually, walking backwards but to begin with attention still remaining frontal. So this was a really different pull between these two almost like different, not quite perspectives, more like energies, almost like pulls, in a way. So this walking backwards but with the eyes oriented forwards, almost had this sense of reversal. Like a sense of time – going backwards, moving back in time. I am moving away from the future in a sense. And to walk backwards but with the attention also in the back – this was very interesting. It felt like leaning into a sense of spaciousness or being held by something beyond me. Like the forward facing, forward attention and moving back was a kind of push/pull dynamic but with this one it was much more like, it felt as if I could fall but it was cushioned by air, or be something … and then again this experimentation with the eyes, closing the eyes and opening the eyes. Yes I was struck by the range of variation actually. And then this movement into wider sensorial shifts, so rather than focusing on sight, to really activate listening again. I realized I was doing this practice but with eyesight, with looking being the dominant sense. Andthen to take it into listening, this relation between listening and backness – feels very close somehow.Almost listening became the cushion I could lean back into – it wasn’t air it was listening, it created a texture that could support me as I was moving backwards.But this was this strong … connected to what you were talking about in relation to longevity, and time and life … this strong sense of reversal. I know we have talked about before the sense of movement and then a reversal of action, but this walking backwards had this sense of, it wasn’t just that I was walking backwards but it felt that I was undoing forward movement. It was as if I had switched the video to rewind or something. So yes this interesting, whether to stay with this experiment, whether you know we were talking about the quality of the back being this negative, this un- or this not or non- or this opposite of the forward or frontal or whether this is just a habit of my thinking to think of it only as a reversal of going forward, or whether with more attention a different kind of experiential sensation shows itself which might not just be the opposite of this going forward. But this recognition of this pull of the frontal, the pull of next, the pull of the future, the pull of the eyes, all the time this pulling out of the present, into this … this pull of frontality in a way.But this transition between the two being an interesting space. So rather than it being a deficit or a failure within the enquiry, to look at the transition as an active shift of awareness, between, the range of awareness that opens up. This idea of different pulls and forces that are acting on us, or I suppose reconfiguring how we moving brings attention to these pulls or forces that act upon us or can be activated or isolated. I have noticed for a quite a while that when I am walking on the street or into uni or in places where there is a little bit of space that I will often close my eyes for a few seconds and keep walking. Knowing that you are not going to bump into something, there is something very enjoyable in just being on the street and having your eyes closed for a while, whilst trying not to disturb the rhythm that I was in. Talking about these pulls. I am thinking about being on all fours, it is another way of releasing the weight, it is more distributed and how backness comes into this … I think that one of the things that I have been interested in within this block if you like is how some of the previous explorations become folded in and also transformed in this shift to standing and moving. And how some of the qualities that we explored in relation to lying down – the backness in lying down around release and passivity, and I suppose in a way the domain of the parasympathetic system … what happens when that moves into movement and does movement always necessitate a shift, and is it possible to move into movement with a quality of backness or with the qualities almost of the rest and digest mode, in movement. Or does movement necessitate a different activation? And speech also, this thing that you were saying earlier about talking and thinking from the back, how can that be practiced?Because I notice if I am walkingthere are qualities of thinking that have much more of a sense of this backness, and qualities of talking, but I know there is this tendency of leaning forward, of forward leaning, this urgency almost, like a, maybe even a bit graspy, grasping for somethingrather than letting it come. This letting, this letting aspect of the back seems important. And then I am also thinking about this, as I am doing with the screen, the rotation of the head … so this rotation from a vertical position and what this does, so as I rotate my head but my body stays facing backwards, what that does to the sensibility. The turning of the head is very particular, because I suppose there is the sense of the forwards and the backwards, it reminds also of all those myths, of not looking back, not looking back. That not-ness. Looking away from the back. You were talking about this walking, this verticality, and the frontality and the backness and the next, next, next, and it feels sometimes to move forwards to the next with the backness, this grasping, it feels like I have a desire to project something, projecting, whereas backwards there is a lot of acceptance, listening, allowing things in. A connection with the environment. This forwards and the next, next, I can feel it, it is a kind of desire, projecting onto something that isn’t there yet.And I lovecoming down to crawling,it is partly to do withhow the back physically feels,but there is also something,it is surrender, it is not giving up it is coming down to a more child, animal, low to the ground, it is a kind of safe space, it removes any sense of having to talk or I think a kind of animal enjoyment in that and feeling the weight and the shoulder blades moving in a different way. Even conjuring up images of cats, dogs, horses, but maybe particularly cats. There is something interesting in how … perhaps becoming other, sensing another being a human being in another way. Whether it is in the water or in relationship to other kinds of animals or ways of being, a watery human and then on all fours. I like this mix of front crawling, down animal-like,it activates another kind of sense of one self as human. And it is interesting crawling, also to crawl backwards, even in that non-vertical axis situation with the spine in its horizontal, there is still a sense of difference crawling forwards and crawling backwards. It activates a different feeling of backness … I am thinking now about what you said before aboutthe reversal of things,it made me think ofunraveling, there is,because in walking backwards the whole thing has to reconfigure, the pelvis, the limbs, everything has to operate slightly differently. It has to be reconfigured. In that physical sense, there is an unraveling. And that reconfiguring of how muscles and joints and things connect with each other,it is sometimes tricky and disorientates, unraveling of the habit perhaps, it is a surprisingly fresh perspective. It shifts your perspective. But at the same time, I have this sensation sometimes on my bike or even with swimming, this sensation for, this desire for, it is different from the next, next, next, a sense of pure glee in speed, which is hard backwards unless you just fall. There is something about having to see to race forward – to run, to cycle. To activate that energy in terms of speed. I can feel this in talking … I can understand why I sometimes need to cycle fast, there is that, especially cycling downhill which is a kind of falling as well as a forward motion. It is a different kind of territory, but something about speed. As you were talking one of the things that came through very strongly wasa sense of clockwise and anticlockwise, and about operating anticlockwise. I am thinking of the movement of the hips and the joints, the hips in particular, I think when I was thinking about, when I was practicing walking backwards, it is interesting that my main concern was around almost, my main concern was around the quality of attention and of awareness but it was still, it was still in the head in a way, that there was this perceptual awareness that is still oriented in the head and the sense organs of the head – and listening, sight. And as a consequence, not even noticing actually, that there is something happening in the muscular and skeletal system which is counter or opposite to habit and this moving backwards, this stepping backwards, taking the joints in the direction that they don’t very often travel in actually. What an operation that is actually. The habits of movement. So far I am thinking of them in terms of frontality of perception, and perhaps not so much that the shift from the frontal to the dorsal creates a different skeletal-muscular relationship in a way. This thing that you were saying before about how we move through the world – how does this shift of orientation within the body affect we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world? The awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit, but also the pleasure in this. I am thinking about swimming too, there is something that is … the limbs, and the legs, and the body moves in a way that facilitates movement but it is not the way that the body walks. The dominance of walking actually – as our dominant movement orientation through the world and as we move to these different possibilities of swimming and crawling and dragging the body – how it activates different kinds of configurations and relationships of the body, and different kinds of sense. I am thinking, talking about this turning of the head, which was reminding me of Feldenkrais practice … a practice of just exploring the movement of the turning of the head and how much of the body participates in that movement, and sometimes, there is a sense in my experience that the eyes, the eyes do a lot of the work, they want to lead it, the head and the eyes are dominant, dominate that movement. And there is something about the different parts of the back that are activated – the cervical spine and the thoracic spine, and in particular the thoracic spine feels quite an unknown territory to me, and to really explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and in being in the world. This sense, this notion you were saying about our being in the world, our ways of moving and being in the world are shaped by the ways that we move and be in the world.So, this impact of such a strong orientation of frontality, andthe sense of dorsality as binary,or almost like the segmentation of the body, how this then shaped the world that one encounters.How might participation of a fuller range of the body change the sense of connection and what worlds start to emerge in a way? And then, maybe thinking a little about Feldenkrais practices, what is participating that doesn’t need to participate. Maybe I would come back to a sense of the eyes, or to thought actually, does thought, does thinking always need to participate in this action? And what does the thinking participating in action do? So something about toning down or letting go of certain tendencies and habits, not to switch from them but to just change the balance, recalibrate the balance in a way. And something also, you were saying about desire, but also this sense of pleasure, this pleasure, a pleasure in moving backwards, a pleasure in being and moving, a very elemental pleasure of almost like … the pleasure of cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment, where sometimes I think in the frontal mode I sort of skate over the surface of the environment to get somewhere.And just this, this deep pleasure that comes from, I mean, this is also there in swimming right, this pleasure of participatingwith the waterto make the movement happen.You really feel, you can really feel.

And this sense of not having gravity acting on the body. I am now thinking of the back in terms of this all roundness sense of the back. On all fours, literally front crawling, on my hands and knees or crawling back. A way of pulling away from the future actually, pulling into not quite present experience, but pulling, trying to counteract or activate an antidote to that next, next, next, next, kind of feeling that I was having in the body.

This movement from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition. It is very messy and murky… it just won’t crystallize. This dorsal quality or a dorsal tilt. Future leaning, it feels falling forwards. Murky back thinking. And that floating and hanging are states of ambivalence. There is lots of darkness. And I think I often resist those kinds of … though it intrigues me.

With the front and the back and how this can create different sensations of duration and time. Back bone. Back ground. Back track. I am curious, and again it is falling into these binaries, but how these binaries they do create a field, a dynamic field. Trying to complicate or unsettle this sense of the binary between the front and the back. And then trying to explore different speeds – because in my enquiry so far there is this correlation between backness and slowness, and I am not sure how much this is a correlation or whether it is a habit.

So moving forward but with the attention in the back but with the eyes looking, and then with the eyes just being open, quite receptive, and then with the eyes closed. This walking backwards but with the eyes oriented forwards, almost had this sense of reversal. Like the forward facing, forward attention and moving back was a kind of push/pull dynamic but with this one it was much more like, it felt as if I could fall but it was cushioned by air.

To really activate listening … take it into listening, this relation between listening and backness – feels very close somehow. It wasn’t air it was listening, it created a texture that could support me as I was moving backwards.

It wasn’t just that I was walking backwards but it felt that I was undoing forward movement. Or whether with more attention a different kind of experiential sensation shows itself which might not just be the opposite of this going forward. But this recognition of this pull of the frontal, the pull of next, the pull of the future, the pull of the eyes, all the time this pulling out of the present, into this … this pull of frontality in a way.

Reconfiguring how we moving brings attention to these pulls or forces that act upon us or can be activated or isolated. What happens when that moves into movement and does movement always necessitate a shift, and is it possible to move into movement with a quality of backness or with the qualities almost of the rest and digest mode, in movement. Or does movement necessitate a different activation? How can that be practiced?

There are qualities of thinking that have much more of a sense of this backness, and qualities of talking, but I know there is this tendency of leaning forward, of forward leaning, this urgency almost, like a, maybe even a bit graspy, grasping for something. This letting aspect of the back seems important.

Not looking back, not looking back. That not-ness. Looking away from the back. It feels like I have a desire to project something, projecting, whereas backwards there is a lot of acceptance, listening, allowing things in. A connection with the environment. This forwards and the next, next, I can feel it, it is a kind of desire, projecting onto something that isn’t there yet. Coming down to crawling, how the back physically feels. It is surrender, it is not giving up it is coming down to a more child, animal, low to the ground, it is a kind of safe space, it removes any sense of having to talk or I think a kind of animal enjoyment in that. It activates another kind of sense of one self as human. The reversal of things. Unraveling.

Because in walking backwards the whole thing has to reconfigure, the pelvis, the limbs, everything has to operate slightly differently. It has to be reconfigured. In that physical sense, there is an unraveling. It is sometimes tricky and disorientates, unraveling of the habit perhaps, it is a surprisingly fresh perspective. It shifts your perspective. A sense of clockwise and anticlockwise, and about operating anticlockwise. Moving backwards, this stepping backwards, taking the joints in the direction that they don’t very often travel in. What an operation that is actually. The habits of movement. 

How does this shift of orientation within the body affect we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world? The awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit, but also the pleasure in this. The dominance of walking actually – as our dominant movement orientation through the world and as we move to these different possibilities of swimming and crawling and dragging the body – how it activates different kinds of configurations and relationships of the body, and different kinds of sense. I am thinking, talking about this turning of the head,

To really explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and in being in the world. Our ways of moving and being in the world are shaped by the ways that we move and be in the world. So, this impact of such a strong orientation of frontality, the sense of dorsality as binary, the segmentation of the body, how this then shaped the world that one encounters.

You were saying about desire -, this pleasure, a pleasure in moving backwards, a pleasure in being and moving, a very elemental pleasure … the pleasure of cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment.. In the frontal mode I sort of skate over the surface of the environment to get somewhere. This pleasure of participating - to make the movement happen.

PART 4

12.07.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Reading as distillation

- Reading practices using the conversational transcript from 24.05.2021 as source text.

- Take time to tune into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

(1) Reading (Noticing Attraction) (5 mins) – Have the transcript to hand, allow gaze to be soft and glide/roam the pages. Practising simultaneously. When a word draws your attention speak it outloud. Allow for overlaps and also silences.

(2) Conversation-as-material distillation (10 mins) – Have the transcript to hand.

When the time feels right read aloud some of the words and phrases that have been highlighted - these could be single words, phrases or a cluster of sentences. Or alternatively, identify words and phrases live and read them aloud.

(3) A more fluid exploration moving between (A) Noticing Attraction and (B) Conversation-as-material distillation. Decide fluidly when to move between one practice and the other and back again (and so on). (20 mins)

3.

1.

2.

1.

Expanded feeling. Isolated. Transition. Back-ness. The edges. Surface. Cushion. Letting. Not clarifying. Not looking back. Some murkiness. Low. Safe. Space. Leaning. Falling. Crawling forwards. Thinking. Horizontal. Surrender. Cushioned by air. Moving backwards. Walking backwards. Orientate differently. A kind of resistance. To complicate. To unsettle. Orientate differently. Stilling. Settling, Leaning. Unraveling. Transition. More receptively. A kind of sampling. Spaciousness. Cushioned. Pulling out. Sensorial shifts. Rewind. Undoing. Speed. Reconfiguring. Projecting onto. Releasing. A watery human. Feeling backness. A different activation. This back-ness. Crawling. Letting. Turning. Ways of. Listening. Allowing things. Pleasure of cooperation. Surrender. Becoming other. A non-vertical axis. To get somewhere. Unraveling. Deep pleasure. Walking backwards. Swimming. Unraveling. Already in the thing. Movement. Coming next. Attention.

2.

Not knowing where to start. Gravity acting on the body. Somehow a different orientation, a relationship to gravity. Being on my own, thinking and reflecting, it is very messy and murky. There is a kind of releasing into gravity, a releasing of weight. There is such a back-ness to it. This future leaning I find very fascinating. This really gets accentuated. Pulling into not-quite-present. Out of necessity, realizing that I was pushing into the next thing. Already into the thing that was coming next. Trying to pull back, into the back as a way of pulling away from the future. And the sense of not having gravity acting on the body. The transition from the frontal to the back – it was pulling back, it was much more mobile, much more dynamic. Perhaps becoming other, sensing another, becoming a human being in another way. Through water or through a relationship with other kinds of animals or other ways of being. A watery human and then on all fours.

Letting it come, this letting, this letting aspect of the back. This rotation, this rotation of the head, this rotation from a vertical position, and what this does. It has to be reconfigured. In a physical sense there is an unraveling, and in that reconfiguring of how muscles and joints and things connect with each other. It is sometimes tricky – it disorientates. Unraveling of the habit perhaps, but also surprisingly fresh. It shifts your perspective. It creates a texture which could support me – a strong sense of reversal, a sense of movement and then a reversal of action. Is it possible to move into movement with the quality of back-ness, almost with the quality of the rest and the digest mode. So rather than it being a deficit or failure, to look at the transition as an active shift of awareness between, the range of awareness that opens up, those pulls and forces that are acting on us. Reconfiguring how we are moving brings attention to these pulls and forces that act upon us or that can be activated or isolated.

Having your eyes closed, trying not to disturb the rhythm. There is something very enjoyable about just being on the street and having your eyes closed for a while. Whilst trying not to disturb the rhythm. There are qualities of thinking that have much more a sense of this back-ness, and qualities of talking. Trying to complicate or unsettle the sense of the binary between the front and the back. So far, there is this correlation between back-ness and slowness, and I am not sure how much this is a correlation or if this is a habit. The attention to the back lying down – there is something of stilling or settling, and those kinds of associations of non-movement, passivity, inaction. And the correlation between direction, awareness and sight in a way. I was interested in this transition from the front to the back in a vertical orientation, and within that the relation between directional frontality, frontality and back-ness in a directional sense, moving forwards, moving backwards, awareness forward, awareness to the back, looking forward, looking more receptively – and the correlation between. It is a kind of safe space – it removes any sense of having to talk, or think, a kind of animal enjoyment in that. Feeling the weight, and the shoulder blades moving in a different way. Conjuring up images of cats, dogs, horses, but particularly cats. It felt as if I could fall but was cushioned by the air, or by something. That not-ness – looking away from the back. What is it to talk or even to think from the back-ness? It is almost like pulling thinking, the thinking coming from the back. To explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and being in the world. This sense, this notion of being-in-the-world, and how our ways of moving and being-in-the-world, are shaped by how we move and be in the world. Thinking and reflecting – it is very messy and murky. There is a sense of being kind of disoriented and not clarifying – there is some murkiness in the back.

Moving backwards, this stepping backwards – taking the joints in a direction that they don’t very often travel in, against the operation that is the habits of movement. This sense of future leaning. Shift of orientation in the body, affecting how we move through the world, and the way that we perceive the world. There is a kind of resistance to it. The awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit. But there is a lot of darkness, walking backwards. There is something about how you are moving through life. As soon as it pulled back it opened up into a much more spacious, expanded feeling. How we move through the world, and how does this shift of orientation within the body affect how we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world. It was still in the head in a way - there was this perceptual awareness that was still oriented in the head, the organs located in the head – of listening, of sight. And as a consequence, not even noticing that there was something happening. This impact of such a strong orientation of frontality. How might the participation of a fuller range of the body change the sense of connection, and what worlds start to emerge in a way. So future leaning has this dorsal tilt – I like how it is in language, and in conversation. It is quite confusing. If I would say to someone ‘future leaning’, it feels falling forwards. Something more like murky back thinking. To really explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and being in the world. Our being-in-the-world, our ways of moving and being-in-the-world, are shaped by the ways that we move and be-in-the-world. Pulling thinking, thinking from the back. What is participating that doesn’t need to participate? I am thinking, I am pulled up. When I am thinking, as soon as I am thinking, I am pulled up and forwards, and think, because of my ears, being on my own, thinking and reflecting, it is very messy and murky.  There is a sense of being kind of disorientated, not clarifying. There is some murkiness in the back. Does thought, does thinking, always need to participate in action? And what does the thinking-participating-in-action do?

3.

To counteract. Activate. Get somewhere. Pulling. Dynamic. Cushion. Tension. Reversal. Crystallize. Attention. Disorientated. Resistance. Leaning. Future. Murky. Pleasure. Surrender. Really feel. Awkwardness. Practicing walking. Participates. Unraveling. Moving forwards. Environments. Backwards. Water. Letting. Forefront. Rotation. Roundness. Deficit. Passivity. Unraveling. Between the front and the back. Becoming other, sensing another being, a human being in another way. Back bone, back ground, back track, again it is falling into binaries, and how these binaries create a field, a dynamic field. Trying to activate an antidote to that next, next, next; with a sense of not having gravity acting on the body. Whereas with back-ness there is a lot of acceptance, listening, allowing things in, a connection with the environment. And all these variables within small sequences, in some senses, I have not really dwelt within these practices. More a kind of sampling. Reconfiguring of how muscles and joints and things connect with each other – unraveling of the habit perhaps. It is a surprisingly fresh perspective, it shifts your perspective. Within that the nuance between directional frontality, frontality and back-ness in a directional sense, moving forwards, moving backwards, awareness forward, awareness to the back, looking forward, looking more receptively. And the correlation between direction and awareness and sight in a way. It is a kind of falling as well as a forward motion. It is a different kind of territory. A different kind of experiential sensation shows itself, which might not just be the opposite of this going forward. Having your eyes closed and trying not to disturb the rhythm. Being on all fours, it is more distributed and how backwards comes into this. So that the whole back is tilted 90 degrees into the horizontal plane. Back bone, back ground, back track – trying to complicate or unsettle this binary between the front and the back. A releasing of gravity, or a releasing of weight. There is such a back-ness to it, especially with crawl. This transition from the front to the back in a vertical orientation and within that the nuance between directional frontality, frontality and back-ness in a directional sense. Moving forwards, moving backwards, awareness forward, awareness to the back, looking forward, looking more receptively. Almost as a remedy to the forward-ness of my attention. This stepping backwards, taking the joints in the direction that they don’t very often travel. What an operation that is actually, against the habits of movement. Murky back thinking. Thinking, talking, about this turning of the head. This mix of front crawling, down, animal-like. To really explore the participation of the thoracic in movement, and being-in-the-world. It activates another kind of sense of oneself as human. Our being-in-the-world, our ways of moving and being-in-the-world, are shaped by the ways that we move and be-in-the-world. So this impact of such a strong orientation of frontality and the sense of dorsality as binary, almost like a segmentation of the body. How this then shapes the world that one encounters. Letting go. A little bit of space. A pleasure in moving backwards, a very elemental pleasure, the pleasure of the cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment. A correlation, a dynamic field. There is a sense of being disorientated and not clarifying – there is some murkiness in the back. Different kinds of thinking perhaps and again, not front/back. Because it is too binary. But there is a back-ness. And future leaning. There is a kind of resistance to it. In thinking, I am pulled up and forwards. There is a lot of darkness, I often resist those things, though it intrigues me: walking backwards, moving backwards, walking backwards. It reminds also of myths of not looking back, not looking back, that not-ness, looking away from the back.

Crawling. Dragging. Unraveling. Orientation. A kind of falling. To counteract. A different kind of territory. It is much more mobile, it is much more dynamic – the back as a dynamic field. How to activate the back as a dynamic field? Something about speed, the pull of the eyes. The sensation of time, how this can create different sensations of duration and of time. Or whether it is a habit, the awkwardness of the opposite. Almost a sense of reversal. The quality of the back being this negative – this not, or none, this un- or opposite of the forward, of the frontal, or whether this is just a habit of my thinking, to think of it only as reversal of going forward. Or whether with more attention a different kind of experiential sensation shows itself, which might not just be the opposite of this going forward. I have been activating this attention to the back whilst walking, but doing it almost as a remedy to the forwardness of my attention. So the places where I have most been activating this, was not setting out to actively think about this or to experiment with this, but it was more out of necessity, recognizing that I was pushing into the next thing. The habits of movement and how we move through the world and how does this shift in orientation in the body effect how we move through the world, and the way that we perceive this world. The opposite, the awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of this experience of moving the limbs opposite to habit, but also the pleasure in this.  Yes, the back as a dynamic field is still this area of challenge that I am experiencing in the experiments that I have been doing. Front/back – it is too binary. The awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit. Something more – murky back thinking. There is a kind of resistance to it. The pleasure of the cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment. This turning of the head. A kind of resistance. Becoming other. Sensing another being, a human being in another way. Maybe it was even a bit graspy. It activates another kind of sense of oneself as human. To crawl backwards – in that non-vertical situation with the spine horizontal there is a still a sense of difference crawling forwards and crawling backwards. It activates a different experience of backwards, the reversal of things, unraveling. Very simply what the body has to do, what the breathing has to do, in order to stay on one leg, or move backwards or orientate differently. I am finding out different things in a way, but there is something about how you are moving through life. It has to coordinate the breathing and the limbs and the swing and the kick – there are all these different rhythms. Cushioned by air. The range of variation. Back track, back ground, back bone. A sense of time going backwards, going back in time, I am moving away from the future in a sense. A sense of dorsality – it is surrender, it is not giving up, it is coming down to a more child-like, animal-like, low to the ground, it is a kind of safe space: it removes any sense of having to talk.

What does thinking, what does the thinking participating in action do? So something about toning down or letting go of certain tendencies or habits. Not to switch from them, but to shift the balance, to recalibrate the balance in a way. This recognition of the pull of the frontal, the pull of the next, the pull of the future, the pull of the eyes. All the time, this pulling out of the present, this pull of frontality. You were saying about desire, but also pleasure, this sense of pleasure, the pleasure in moving backwards, the pleasure in being and moving. A very elemental pleasure, of almost like the pleasure of the cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment. Our being-in-the-world, our ways of moving and being-in-the-world, are shaped by the ways that we move and be in the world. What is it to talk or even think from the back, a different kind of thinking? Again, not front/back – this is too binary. But there is a back-ness. I sort of skate over the surface - this impact of such a strong orientation of frontality. How might participation of a fuller range of the body, change the sense of connection and what worlds start to emerge in a way? What is participating that doesn’t need to participate?

I mean I was just going up and down, right to left, breathing in and out, kicking, lots of one/two, one/two. But how all that coordinates, it is really into the back. I am thinking of the back in terms of this all-roundness sense of the back. There is a kind of releasing of gravity, or releasing of weight. There is such a back-ness to it. Maybe I come back to a sense of the eyes, or thought actually – does thought, does thinking always need to participate in this action, and what does the thinking participating in action do? With the attention  in the back with the eyes looking, and then with the eyes just being open, quite receptive, and then with the eyes closed.  All these variables within small sequences. It is much more mobile, it is much more dynamic. Where are the edges – yes, the back as a dynamic field is still this area of challenge. A kind of push/pull dynamic but it was cushioned by the air. A quality of attention and of awareness but it was still in the head in a way. And the awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit. But also the pleasure in this. Like a kind of sampling. To just change the balance, recalibrate the balance in a way. Sensorial shifts. In leaning, a sense of spaciousness or being held by something beyond me. Like with the forward-facing, forward attention, the moving back was a kind of push/pull dynamic. But with this one it felt as if I could fall, but it was cushioned by air. This idea of different pulls and forces that are acting on us, or I suppose reconfiguring how moving brings attention to these pulls and forces that act upon us, and can be activated or isolated. And then this movement into a wider field, rather than as this still, flat surface. Whether it is the front or it is the back. And there is this move from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition. There is some murkiness in the back, a different kind of thinking perhaps – and again not front/back, this is too binary.

PART 5

12.07.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Fields of Association

Fields of Association (30 mins)

- Tuning into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

- Each selects a cluster of single words to explore through conversation and etymological exploration, live within the conversation), as a field of association.

(1) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(2)  8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

(3) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(4) 8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

1.

2.

4.

3.