PART 2
EXPLORATION DATE: 16.01.23
FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was the preceding period of exploration (30 November 2022 - 16 January 2023).
STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE
Speaker is not visible (masks camera with tape), listener has back turned, active listening.
1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]
2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]
3. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]
4. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]
4. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 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.
16012023 re-turning III
Maybe I am thinking of, I had these days in December when I went back into a studio space situation. And trying to revisit, or seeing what would come up again. I suppose, it was a month ago, a month before that, when I was in a similar situation – of simply starting to move, and seeing what patterns would be coming up. And seeing what returned by itself, what did return. And, but also other things that I was trying to touch upon again, but that wouldn’t return. So, maybe that is interesting to start with – this idea of returning to patterns, or sensations, patterns as a physical sense as pulses or as patterning. The body is shaped by bringing attention to patterning and pulses, sort of rhythmic patterns that are very repetitive, that can get stuck or you can keep moving them in the body. I am saying that because – yes, I suppose giving space. I find it very interesting to not try and find something again, because these are illusive, illusive. Or perhaps you have a sense of something, or a memory of something, but actually it is not really what it was or what it can be again. It is almost like when you are trying to return to something, the idea or a memory or something very particular that I want to touch upon again… and the illusiveness of that. The memory or a strong sensation, it sort of gets in the way of re-finding it. And trying to practice in a way where things can be re-found, and if not, it might happen in the next day or maybe never, or maybe it has returned but for some reason perhaps recognising it in a different way or something has shifted slightly. All these nuances of returning and re-finding and things being re-found. But there are these moments where it felt very particular and I felt, “ah – I know this”, and this thing has come back and I am still interested in it or curious. So there is the other side, that some things return very quickly, they are very, perhaps very embedded traces in the body, you just need to find the right switch, and they are there again. Perhaps this is a relationship, returning to something in relation to the body, what the body does or can remember or understands. A relationship between patterning and sensation, or patterning … I suppose I am trying to work out this idea of when you return to something where is memory in that, what part does memory play, or body memory. And how that is very fluid, almost always moving on. Perhaps even in this very physical sense of letting patterns return or re-finding things, or re-familiarising or things becoming familiar again. The returning is also not backwards, not linear, but a kind of resurfacing perhaps or it is around, this around-ness of the turn, or this being in the midst, or traces being in the body rather than having to step back or retrace the steps.
Yes, it was interesting hearing you talk then about an approach to practice, and maybe the thing that struck me most – as a way in – was this difference between returning, yes, the nuance of returning really. A sense of the agency of returning. And what it means to return to something, where the sense of effort or intention you know is very much in “me” – I am trying or striving to return to something, there is a trying or a striving. And then the way you were describing of something returning or recurring or re-emerging or reappearing again. And it was bringing to mind when we were working together in S1, and yes, something to do with how to activate a practice, or how to be activated by a practice, which could be a different way of thinking about it and which could be useful. I recall looking at the documentation and the sense of effort even being quite evident in my facial expression, and that sense of forcefulness in some ways, or this doing of a practice which has a degree of effort or force. It is activating or trying to do something, trying to do a dorsal practice. And I get the sense more and more, that this is not something that can be done in a way – you were touching upon this sense of the practice returning, allowing the practice to return. I think that this feels a very beautiful way of thinking about it. I guess what it makes me think about is the quality of spaciousness. Or two things really – the quality of spaciousness in the moment and trust actually to allow a practice to return or a movement to return or a sensibility to return. To make space for that, and this is something that needs to be practised. So, yes, I guess I am reflecting on these last months – and how certain circumstances close down that sense of spaciousness at times, and what the conditions might be for a certain kind of practice, or not even what the conditions needs to be, but what conditions are conducive to a certain practice. And I think that having that sense of space and open-ness to allow for the possibility of something returning – it is a very different way of being in the world. There is something to do with there being a different rhythm – a different quality of time, a different quality of attention, a quality of patience maybe or even the quality of wilfulness is very different. So I am noticing when it is not present, more so than when it is present in a way, or noticing some of the obstacles and the possibility of a practice returning and not me trying to return to it with force and will. A kind of scheduling of it almost – like ‘now, now it needs to come’ and yes there is something there about embodiment.
It makes me think of how working with the body is more, it often can offer a lot of insight into how things work. I am remembering working with the body and hearing you speak now, I am reflecting on being in the studio and this quality of spaciousness is something I could relate to, when you were talking about it that way. Because it almost feels – there is something about the body and spaciousness, it is more a letting go than a doing. This is returning to something that we have talked about quite a lot – something about this dorsal quality of letting go. It almost feels like there is no, there is very little doing. I suppose it can feel like nothing is happening or it feels, maybe this is also a habit, that you have to feel the work, feel the effort to feel that you have been doing something or that something … it feels that these last few months I have been trying to, well, also the work of resisting that, sometimes having really touched on it. It feels like almost a sense of a scary, the scariness of not actually doing anything, and I am certainly not achieving anything because I don’t hold on, I don’t hold on to anything, I don’t try to make anything out of something. It is a very interesting space of drift, no, drift is not quite the right word. The sense of spaciousness at certain moments, to trust that spaciousness and that things are happening within it. And by holding on to it, you actually stop the flow of things being able to emerge and appear. All those lovely re- words, reoccurring, that you were saying. And even as soon as you try to dive in there, I remember that there were really sensations of, oh, I have dropped myself out again, or I have pushed myself, and there is a schism, two forces working against each other. What was I saying – something about how the body is very revealing and can offer these insights. To trust in embodied practices. And the kinds of words that emerge from this practice, the words almost emerge by themselves, as we talk … words creating more of a whole textual landscape of experience behind them. I have lost the thread of what I was going to say – what is in my mind now is this sense that I have had to save photographs and letters from the water, and this sense, not of delving into them deeply, but how the photo or the letter is kind of a trigger pulling you back into a situation or a previous ‘you’, or a relationship or a sense of place, and it has made me think that there is something, when things are far away, far enough away it is like they are part of you, but you don’t really feel them – there is almost not a physical sensation for some of them. It feels a bit muddled, but also this idea of returning to how things can trigger a returning.
Yes, this sense of letting go, dorsal practice as a means of letting go, no not a means, an attitude. Infused with this quality of letting go or releasing or not holding. One thing that was coming up as you were talking with this sense of to take on and practice, kind of like life practices in a way, there is no agenda as such. They somehow .. that practices are cultivated towards a certain quality of living and of aliveness, and yes, I have a have a sense, partly because I was on a retreat when I was activating or trying to get in touch with some of these practices, and in a sense, some of that is to do with a reorientation of living, or a reorganisation of life in a particular kind of way. You could even say a reorientation of living towards being alive in a sense. I think that my own obstacles are in some ways to do in some ways with the pressures of academia, or the pressures of publishing, or the pressures of project and attainment and bringing things into a particular form. And I guess I can feel this within this particular exploration – on the one hand there is this exploration of dorsal practices as a mode of being, a way of being, a kind of radical alternative to some of the habits that I know I have. You know, a kind of practice or an attitude towards joy in some way, a joyful release, the word renunciation was very present when you were talking, for me. A renunciation or a letting go of certain kinds of patterns of holding, whether in the body, even the grasping towards transcript or documentation or the making of something out of something. The making of something out of experience really, perhaps differently from the practice of experiencing. I think within that there is also this dilemma of the sense of dorsal practices as a mode of living, and dorsal practices as a research practice, and the interplay, perhaps even tension, between what is at stake in those two modes in some senses. And yes, it feels as if there are different things at stake, and there are different durations. There is something about, as a research project, there is something about the shareability of that, and the bringing out of the findings. This making of something out of experience in some ways. But I also think of it in a longer term, as transformation or kind of like re-education in some ways, or reorganising, a very radical reorganising of a way of being, but to that really requires practice, and the embodiment of the practices. And I guess feeling this tension between living something as life practice, and doing things as research practices – and whether they can be brought closer so that there is not such a difference in a sense. But I think that sense of living and aliveness feels really core in some of that – like the dorsal as a way of living.
I think I have similar thoughts sometimes, certainly these last few months with not having to work. What you were saying about dorsal practices as research, and dorsal living. Maybe that is to do also with a sense of time, of dorsal practice as research, in the studio or here in our conversations. I feel that we let our lives seep into this and it seeps into our lives. And this radical reorganisation of living is very interesting and it is exciting, but it takes time, it takes a long, long time. And maybe it comes back to these traces and patterns and habits – undoing – all these “un” – the undoing and unmaking and what did you say, the unlearning. But these seepage, I find that there is a seepage in this practice that happens, also because we have been doing this over a long time, in quite a calm – with moments when we have wanted to share something or put something out – with this extended sense of time and time between coming together. I have lost my thread. Yes, things take time and part of this practice is perhaps we have allowed things to take time, and the value in that – which is very hard to find in work situations, in the work contexts that we work within. And I wonder, and I suppose this would be an experiment for the next few months, how much of that – this spaciousness or you said patience, or quietness, or deep listening – can happen in these quite stressful situations where decisions have to be made quite fast. So there is this tension between the sense of the possibility of being able to shift things for oneself, and that the external world is not ready for it – this tension of how to find, to find ways in … maybe this is the micro, micro seepages and leaks, this alertness or aliveness to small moments, or details where it can seep in. This would be interesting for me to do, if I were to take this idea of dorsal practices into working situation, that I might try and stay alert or alive to tiny little shifts that I might make, or something that I would recognise as a possibility come into a slightly different, or to not do, or to let go. Yes and in that way sometimes I feel in work situations, they are also very repetitive kinds of things, repetition of the kinds of conversations, the activities that you do – so in a way there are lots of opportunities to recognise patterns and to observe and to slightly shift things or to be practising, maybe seeing, this shift of seeing work as a practice. I am realising in saying this, yes, I separate those things. I have my practice and then I have my work with students and colleagues. So actually, this seepage that I was talking about, I am now realising that I have to let my work also be my practice. I mean in the creative way when I am devising things, but also in this sense of daily managing of relationships, and administration, and all those institutional things – all this could also be part of the practice. Which makes me also … because there are also … there is also something about dorsal practices as a research project where we are creating conditions for it, for it to happen. And by taking it into other conditions where you don’t have so much control of the situation. What do I want to say with that? It doesn’t mean that you can’t practice, even if you can’t control all of the things around, it perhaps even invites more alertness and more … in a way it is quite exciting to think I don’t need to compartmentalise it so much. We have often talked about how it seeps in, but there is something more. I am really rambling – I am going to change tack. I am going to look at another word – it is interesting, before we met, I was having these images of coming back to this word to return, and coming to these different senses of returning. A retracing of steps but also this idea of flipping something over and over, so I could see it is a different way. I had this idea that it could be a thing – like a photograph, a thing or an object, how in turning it, this image of me handling, literally handling something in my hands, turning it over, looking at it this way and then that way. Then maybe putting it down and stepping back – this sense of maybe returning to something that is easy to see – it is a book or it is a ball. But somehow in returning to it, retouching it, that it … you can move beyond the obviousness. I was also thinking about this returning to these photographs or a letter. There is an immediacy – ah, that was then, that is him, or her, and then there is this other kind of returning as in, as in ah, there is a woman and there is a chair and there is light coming in through the window. It creates, in a way it creates a distance but also a new way in, a new entry point into this place or life or intimacy between two people in the photograph that is not your life. It is your life, but also not, and there is something around closeness and intimacy and recognisability and also some sense that distance can create new entry points in or new sides to that, or that the photograph or the place is so far away. It is not necessarily in the body, but it has informed the body. Yes, this sensation that these photographs and these letters are me – it is not that I have a fresh memory of them but it is all part of me.
There was something as you were talking about this application of a kind of dorsal orientation in work and life situations, that was making me think of the ethical dimension of this. Perhaps also because the retreat I was on over the Winter was around Ethics. This question of what is the ethical orientation of dorsal practices? I think that there is something there, if I think of my experiences, that sometimes … how do I feel it … at times there is a feeling of separation between myself and the rest of the world. And I know in these forward-leaning moments, it feels like this “me”, this “I”, is sort of pressing into the world, or leaning into the world, or intervening into the world in some kind of way. And I think that there is something with the dorsal where the sense of the world is so much more present in my experience, so that line between, the line of separation is less distinct somehow. And that feels ethical, there is an ethical dimension there. Partly because it feels that somehow whenever I am leaning in, wherever I have this sense of me leaning in or being separate from the world, there is always some quality of self-investment, or self-protection or agenda. And it is painful, I think. Maybe I come back to the sense of the dorsal having this pleasurable dimension, or joyful dimension. Concrete experiences as helpful for me, not to abstract, but to come back to a particular experience. On this retreat, I am recalling, it was very wintery, rainy, windy weather, and going for a walk along the side of a river, and on the way back walking into the wind and rain coming into me almost horizontally, and just this sense of feeling like I was almost on a diagonal leaning into the wind and almost bracing myself against the elements. So this idea of bracing oneself or forcing oneself, forcing oneself into the elements, bracing against the wind. And I turned around at this point and started to walk backwards, and it was such a almost like complete flip of experience. Somehow, yes, it was interesting. I was still leaning almost as if diagonally, because the wind was so strong, I could lean back into the wind. yes, there are lots of little micro movements in this – I wonder how is the difference between? From moving forwards and almost bracing into force, the force of the wind, and then turning, and being held, being held up by the wind. A real radical turn, a literal turn in one way, turning from front to back, but also the transformation of the turn in the sensations and the experience of it. And then almost being able to kind of have my arms out and to lean into the wind and to be supported by it. And then this sense of the turn towards walking backwards also changed the speed of walking. So I think before the speed – leaning into the wind – it was quite fast with this sense of hurry or urgency to get away from an experience in a way, to get through. Yes, this experience of getting through something … to then leaning in and finding some pleasure in that. And the feeling of the wind coming around the sides of the body and having, yes, feeling the sense of its force as an energy that could be leant into and played with in some ways. And this walking backwards necessarily slowing the speed, that capacity to just dwell in the experience, rather than to try to press through or get through or push a way through life in a way. To just be in life and to be supported. I think that we have talked before about is this sense of a quality of participation. The quality of participation elementally felt very strong there, and it makes me think about, yes, some of these turns of phrase around facing up to things, and what does it mean to face up to things. It is a weird sort of phrase in a way – this facing up. And we have also talked before about the turning of the back as a kind of withdrawal or protection, but this kind of turning of the back did not feel like that. It was not facing into the wind, and it was turning my back, but there was something that this enabled that was playful or joyful or transformative in some kind of way. Yes, maybe something about feeling somehow, participating within an elemental interplay of energies or maybe just as simple as just being there then at that particular moment. And somehow disabling the desire to get to somewhere else that is not in that experience, yes, maybe that is a way of saying it. The forward leaning tendency was very much tied into a desire to be somewhere other than the experience that was unfolding at that particular moment, and the shift towards to dorsal was very much an accepting of that situation. More than accepting – in accepting … yes, how does it feel. In accepting, it kind of opens out. Let me think how this is. In this pressing forwards, there is a desire not to be in an experience, and very much, in my body trying to be somewhere else. And in this accepting, and turning around, yes, there is something to do with this quality of the edge between myself and the rest of the world becoming much softer somehow. It is just being in an experience that is much less contoured in terms of “myself” trying to get “somewhere”, and just allowing an interplay of energies. We have talked about kites before, I know we have, and now I am just thinking of the quality of feeling kite-like. And just letting your limbs and body, particularly when it is windy, there is something about the wind that I really like – that you can just let your limbs drop into the movement of the wind and let go of that sense of motor-intention somehow. To just be floppy, and how nice this feels, this sense of floppiness or letting go. Being held up by something that seems very intangible – not by another body or by the wall but by this air. And also, this is similar in water – being held by something that is not solid in a way and what that feels like. I am not sure where I am going with that – but that feeling of being supported from the back by something that has no real solidity and the trust, yes, something about trust and willingness. And maybe there is something to do with properties of imbalance that are now coming to mind – where you can lean, this leaning but without gripping. A quality of leaning where there is softness. Leaning with softness rather than leaning that has a kind of gripping or a bracing or a tension within it somehow.
Picking up on where you left, left off. Yes, there was something about what you were saying – about as if you were holding onto a bar or something that is holding you up. How being held up without having the use the limbs, or grip. There is something very elemental about that – this idea of being able to float, or suspend, or be held, rather than have to hold up. And then these moments when that can happen. I have been thinking, as a child that can happen all the time. I have an idea that many adults are looking at children being thrown up and held with a wistful feeling. I would say if there is one thing I might miss of being a child it might be that. Being a smaller thing that could be held by bigger things. The sense of floating – I was thinking as you were talking, I went a walk with my son and at a certain moment, I had a very sudden impulse – I need to lie down, to stop the flow. Even though that was just a gentle walk. As soon as you lie down there is also a release, a not-going-anywhere. And this shift, which felt very much like a returning in a way, to one of our first sessions – moving from the vertical, or from standing, into lying and how, how, in that shift, in that 90 degree shift, what an impact that has on the body. And how it really does, it feels that there is a whole sense of refiguring how the body is engaging in the world. Imagining as you are turning away from the wind, the face and the eyes are relieved. And because the eyes are in the front of your head and you have turned your back, they are relieved of having to go forwards, of having to go anywhere. Yes, this sense of around-ness, of sides, of things wrapping around, rather than the body forcing its way through. Yes. This sense of suspension – physically there is a suspension, but also a suspension of that flow of time, a sort of pause or a hovering before things might move on, or things are dropped. Now I was just thinking, returning to this idea of lying on the ground. I was thinking also of the sense of you lying on the ground and it is not even, and there is a slight slope. And the opening of the eyes to the sky. Coming back to this sense of a simple movement like that and your wonderful moment of turning your back and being held by the wind. There is a, perhaps there is a pleasure and joy – I am alive, on this planet, which is holding me – and there is gravity and there are forces. It perhaps feels more part of the forces that are acting upon us.
I think sometimes that pleasure or that joy just comes from not really thinking. You know, really being absorbed. No, not thinking. But not a certain kind of thinking. There is something very present about it in a way. I think again, I am coming back to the sense of it not being to do with elsewhere. Somehow being elsewhere, or wanting to be elsewhere. Maybe even something to do with contentment. Yes, content in the sense of being here and not wanting to be somewhere else. It is interesting – these last weeks I have been re-reading, I have a small book, I have been on an Ethics retreat (which is in a Buddhist framework) but also I am reading a book about the 8 limbs of the yoga tradition. Yama and niyama are these ethical observances within a yoga practice – and contentment also being one of those. This sense of acceptance of circumstance and situation. And actually, maybe something to do with the possibility of happiness within that somehow. And then the others having this quality of non-grasping. So something to do with contentment and non-grasping – which I think somehow also resonates with this sense of letting go. This non-grasping dimension keeps coming up somehow. Which in that context is understood as greed, which I think very interesting. This greediness of the future-leaning, and wanting more, more, more – I can even feel my hands kind of go out when I think like that, drawing the future towards me. Like more, more, more, quicker, quicker. But the dorsal is a stepping back, or a leaning back, or a contentment in the present moment somehow. No, contentment is not quite the word I am looking for – it is more like, maybe it is even appreciation. Attunement to the vibrancy of these very particular moments, these very particular alivenesses in a way. And just how, just how liberating that feels actually. Even if they are small moments, that there is just something where, yes, it is just being taken out of that cycle of reaching towards things, and striving towards things. Yes, maybe it even feels quite atemporal, like outside of time somehow. Yes. I am not quite sure where I am going with that. I am trying to hold that quality of sensation that was there when I was leaning into the wind. It lasts for so long and then, I don’t know, it is almost as if chronology comes back. And then that desire to get somewhere again returns. I don’t think it is something that could be inhabited forever. Somehow they feel like, almost like breaks or ruptures or interludes or reminders. Reminders even. But just in a very different register of being somehow. Or maybe they only feel like interludes because so much of the habit of my existence has this future-leaning, grasping orientation to it. I am not sure. And then also the difference in the sense of this imbalance between softening and disorientation.
While you were speaking I was re-remembering some workshops I have done in Body Weathering – I am not sure if this has come up in our conversations. But in this context, I was thinking about these practices, these exercises in Body Weathering which is a kind of practice or training which Butoh dancers would have done, but it is not that theatrical. It is really that training of the body. One of the things that I find most interesting – is trying not to name things, or put names on things, to say where our sensations come from. There was this thing where you either put yourself or are taken into a situation, perhaps sometimes even outside as well, or placed in a situation – perhaps against a tree, or on the grass, or on the pavement. And to remain lying very still – sometimes for 10 minutes, or twenty minutes – and this idea of observing and accepting. So, if there is cold hard sensation on the thigh – it is not like, oh, this pavement is made of concrete. There is something about stopping the thinking – like you were saying, to move into that sensation and to accept discomfort or pain, not as an endurance thing but to just see, just feel, it is there. And I am realising that there is a dorsal practice in that, letting things be. And I remember she used this word ‘acceptance’, you just accept things through what you perceive. You don’t try to jump ahead and explain it to yourself – something like that. So it is working through the senses, in that way, it is a training in working through the senses and the body, the experience of it. But I do remember a very strong sensation, this sense of interlude, it was a kind of break, coming into …. Mette Edvardsen has this lovely performance – when she says you come into the world of objects. And it feels like you come into the world of trees or the concrete or the studio corner or the dust. And I have worked with that idea. I think that this interlude, or this sensation that you are talking about, it is this sense of the break in the fact that we are moving. And more that we are being held by things, and other things can move around us for a while. And coming back then, this does create a spaciousness, because I suppose it is a classic sense of being in the present moment and that moment is moving constantly. So it is a very alert, awake, accepting situation. Yes, you are in a situation. I remember thinking, yes, this is a situation that I am in. And other parts of Body Weathering didn’t feel so dorsal – but this is very linked somehow to how we have been practising. And how we are shaping, how we are shaped by our own movements and how we perceive and how we put ourselves into our own bodies, and into the world, and into the environment. And how we are shaped by that, and how we also shape the things around us. There was something in those still moments where I felt strong sense of this shaping as a process.
Yes, as I am thinking about this participation at an elemental level, I am thinking about how self is felt somehow, and something to do with the border of the skin in those elemental encounters the sense of awareness feeling somehow at the level of this interaction or interplay. Somehow, my sense of awareness is bigger than my body, it becomes part of an atmosphere or the environment in a sense. The feeling of me being contoured by my skin becomes less tangible and there is a kind of spaciousness through this feeling of forces. Something to do with feeling of forces, interaction – the feeling of forces, relational. Then the other particular kind of practice that has been coming up these last months – maybe more in a meditation context or a yoga context again – where in some sessions that I have participated in, there is an invitation to take the attention - I mean in some ways it might be described as the energetic line, that in some traditions it might be where the chakras might be, or in another tradition, it might be from a Japanese tradition, to find this place of hara, the abdominal space – but the invitation in the practice was to move the awareness from the front of the body, back, and then behind the spine. So to move the awareness behind the spine, this energetic space behind the spine. But to enter it, by dropping in the awareness from the front. And this was very interesting because there was this, this depth, or this diving or dropping, but dropping – often from lying down – dropping into the body, as if it were a well in some kind of way. Not a physical space in the sense of flesh and bones, but even more like a kind of psychic space that you could drop into. And I was very interested in this sensation of dropping into the energetic space behind the spine, but dropping into this from the front, dropping, dropping through the body, behind the spine – and the spaciousness that is opening up there. That does feel very spacious. And that, even that sense of dropping into this sense of the depths of one’s self, there is a space which opens up which is much more than physical space, the material, physical space of the body. And I think that this spaciousness opens up in this shift of attention towards the back. Maybe this is something I can explore more – the feeling of coming into this space of the back, from the back, you know, even from the sense of tactility of leaning on the floor, feeling the surface of the back in contact with the floor, and coming into the inner back, the inner body behind the spine that way. How is it different or similar to dropping into the spine from the front. And, yes, that resource of spaciousness that is there. Maybe there is something about these two kinds of spaciousness that I can recognise in my experience – one, the spaciousness that opens out into the world through a participation with other forces in the world beyond the body, this feeling of movement as you are leaning into the wind, or leaning back, but also this spaciousness that has an interiority to it, this behind the spine kind of space.
Trying to revisit, or seeing what would come up again. Simply starting to move, and seeing what patterns would be coming up. Seeing what returned by itself, what did return. Other things that I was trying to touch upon again, but that wouldn’t return. This idea of returning to patterns, or sensations, patterns as a physical sense as pulses or as patterning. The body is shaped by bringing attention to patterning and pulses, sort of rhythmic patterns that are very repetitive, that can get stuck or you can keep moving them in the body. Giving space - to not try and find something again, because these are illusive, illusive. When you are trying to return to something, the idea or a memory … and the illusiveness of that. The memory or a strong sensation, it sort of gets in the way of re-finding it. Trying to practice in a way where things can be re-found, and if not, it might happen in the next day or maybe never, or maybe it has returned but for some reason perhaps recognising it in a different way or something has shifted slightly. All these nuances of returning and re-finding and things being re-found. There are these moments where it felt very particular and I felt, “ah – I know this”, and this thing has come back. Some things return very quickly, they are embedded traces in the body, you just need to find the right switch, and they are there again. Perhaps this is a relationship, returning to something in relation to the body, what the body does or can remember or understands. A relationship between patterning and sensation, or patterning … When you return to something where is memory in that, what part does memory play, or body memory. And how that is very fluid, almost always moving on. This very physical sense of letting patterns return or re-finding things, or re-familiarising or things becoming familiar again. The returning is also not backwards, not linear, but a kind of resurfacing perhaps or it is around, this around-ness of the turn, or this being in the midst, or traces being in the body rather than having to step back or retrace the steps.
The nuance of returning really. A sense of the agency of returning. And what it means to return to something, where the sense of effort or intention you know is very much in “me” – I am trying or striving to return to something, there is a trying or a striving. And then the way you were describing of something returning or recurring or re-emerging or reappearing again. Something to do with how to activate a practice, or how to be activated by a practice, which could be a different way of thinking about it. This sense of the practice returning, allowing the practice to return. The quality of spaciousness – the quality of spaciousness in the moment and trust actually to allow a practice to return or a movement to return or a sensibility to return. To make space for that, and this is something that needs to be practised. How certain circumstances close down that sense of spaciousness at times, and what the conditions might be for a certain kind of practice, or not even what the conditions needs to be, but what conditions are conducive to a certain practice. Having that sense of space and open-ness to allow for the possibility of something returning – it is a very different way of being in the world. There is something to do with there being a different rhythm – a different quality of time, a different quality of attention, a quality of patience maybe or even the quality of wilfulness is very different. So I am noticing when it is not present, more so than when it is present in a way, or noticing some of the obstacles and the possibility of a practice returning and not me trying to return to it with force and will. A kind of scheduling of it almost – like ‘now, now it needs to come’ and yes there is something there about embodiment.
Working with the body, there is something about the body and spaciousness, it is more a letting go than a doing. Something about this dorsal quality of letting go. It almost feels like there is no, there is very little doing. It can feel like nothing is happening or it feels, maybe this is also a habit, that you have to feel the work, feel the effort to feel that you have been doing something or that something … The work of resisting that, a sense of the scariness of not actually doing anything, not achieving anything because I don’t hold on, I don’t hold on to anything. I don’t try to make anything out of something. It is a very interesting space of drift, no, drift is not quite the right word. The sense of spaciousness at certain moments, to trust that spaciousness and that things are happening within it. And by holding on to it, you actually stop the flow of things being able to emerge and appear. All those lovely re- words. As soon as you try to dive in there, I remember that there were really sensations of, oh, I have dropped myself out again, or I have pushed myself, and there is a schism, two forces working against each other. The body is very revealing and can offer these insights. To trust in embodied practices. And the kinds of words that emerge from this practice, the words almost emerge by themselves, as we talk … words creating more of a whole textual landscape of experience behind them
Yes, this sense of letting go, dorsal practice as a means of letting go, no not a means, an attitude. Infused with this quality of letting go or releasing or not holding. Practices are cultivated towards a certain quality of living and of aliveness, and yes, that is to do with a reorientation of living, or a reorganisation of life in a particular kind of way. You could even say a reorientation of living towards being alive in a sense. I think that my own obstacles are in some ways to do in some ways with the pressures of academia, or the pressures of publishing, or the pressures of project and attainment and bringing things into a particular form. Within this particular exploration – on the one hand there is this exploration of dorsal practices as a mode of being, a way of being, a kind of radical alternative to some of the habits that I know I have. A kind of practice or an attitude towards joy in some way, a joyful release. Renunciation - a renunciation or a letting go of certain kinds of patterns of holding, whether in the body, even the grasping towards transcript or documentation or the making of something out of something. The making of something out of experience really, perhaps differently from the practice of experiencing. There is also this dilemma of the sense of dorsal practices as a mode of living, and dorsal practices as a research practice, and the interplay, perhaps even tension, between what is at stake in those two modes in some senses. There are different things at stake, and there are different durations. There is something about, as a research project, there is something about the shareability of that, and the bringing out of the findings. This making of something out of experience in some ways. But I also think of it in a longer term, as transformation or kind of like re-education in some ways, or reorganising, a very radical reorganising of a way of being, but to that really requires practice, and the embodiment of the practices. And I guess feeling this tension between living something as life practice, and doing things as research practices – and whether they can be brought closer so that there is not such a difference in a sense. But I think that sense of living and aliveness feels really core in some of that – like the dorsal as a way of living.
Dorsal practices as research, and dorsal living. Maybe that is to do also with a sense of time, of dorsal practice as research, in the studio or here in our conversations. I feel that we let our lives seep into this and it seeps into our lives. And this radical reorganisation of living is exciting, but it takes time, it takes a long, long time. And maybe it comes back to these traces and patterns and habits – undoing – all these “un” – the undoing and unmaking and the unlearning. There is a seepage in this practice that happens, also because we have been doing this over a long time – with this extended sense of time and time between coming together. Yes, things take time and part of this practice is perhaps we have allowed things to take time, and the value in that – which is very hard to find in work situations, in the work contexts that we work within. How much of that – this spaciousness or you said patience, or quietness, or deep listening – can happen in these situations where decisions have to be made quite fast. To find ways in … maybe this is the micro, micro seepages and leaks, this alertness or aliveness to small moments, or details where it can seep in. To take this idea of dorsal practices into working situation, I might try and stay alert or alive to tiny little shifts that I might make, or something that I would recognise as a possibility come into a slightly different, or to not do, or to let go. In work situations, there are also very repetitive kinds of things, repetition of the kinds of conversations, the activities that you do – so in a way there are lots of opportunities to recognise patterns and to observe and to slightly shift things or to be practising, maybe seeing, this shift of seeing work as a practice. So actually, this seepage - I have to let my work also be my practice in the creative way when I am devising things, but also in this sense of daily managing of relationships, and administration, and all those institutional things – all this could also be part of the practice. There is also something about dorsal practices as a research project where we are creating conditions for it, for it to happen. And by taking it into other conditions where you don’t have so much control of the situation. What do I want to say with that? It doesn’t mean that you can’t practice, even if you can’t control all of the things around, it perhaps even invites more alertness. Coming back to this word to return, and coming to these different senses of returning. A retracing of steps but also this idea of flipping something over and over, so I could see it is a different way. I had this idea that it could be a thing – like a photograph, a thing or an object, how in turning it, this image of me handling, literally handling something in my hands, turning it over, looking at it this way and then that way. Then maybe putting it down and stepping back – this sense of maybe returning to something that is easy to see – it is a book or it is a ball. But somehow in returning to it, retouching it, that it … you can move beyond the obviousness. There is an immediacy – then there is this other kind of returning. It is not necessarily in the body, but it has informed the body.
A kind of dorsal orientation in work and life situations - the ethical dimension of this. What is the ethical orientation of dorsal practices? If I think of my experiences, that sometimes … how do I feel it … at times there is a feeling of separation between myself and the rest of the world. And I know in these forward-leaning moments, it feels like this “me”, this “I”, is sort of pressing into the world, or leaning into the world, or intervening into the world in some kind of way. There is something with the dorsal where the sense of the world is so much more present in my experience, so that line between, the line of separation is less distinct somehow. And that feels ethical, there is an ethical dimension there. Somehow whenever I am leaning in, wherever I have this sense of me leaning in or being separate from the world, there is always some quality of self-investment, or self-protection or agenda. And it is painful, I think. Maybe I come back to the sense of the dorsal having this pleasurable dimension, or joyful dimension. To come back to a particular experience - walking into the wind and rain coming into me almost horizontally, and just this sense of feeling like I was almost on a diagonal leaning into the wind and almost bracing myself against the elements. So this idea of bracing oneself or forcing oneself, forcing oneself into the elements, bracing against the wind. And I turned around at this point and started to walk backwards, and it was such a almost like complete flip of experience. I was still leaning almost as if diagonally, because the wind was so strong, I could lean back into the wind. yes, there are lots of little micro movements in this – I wonder how is the difference between? From moving forwards and almost bracing into force, the force of the wind, and then turning, and being held, being held up by the wind. A real radical turn, a literal turn in one way, turning from front to back, but also the transformation of the turn in the sensations and the experience of it. And then almost being able to kind of have my arms out and to lean into the wind and to be supported by it. And then this sense of the turn towards walking backwards also changed the speed of walking. So I think before the speed – leaning into the wind – it was quite fast with this sense of hurry or urgency to get away from an experience in a way, to get through. Yes, this experience of getting through something … to then leaning in and finding some pleasure in that. And the feeling of the wind coming around the sides of the body and having, yes, feeling the sense of its force as an energy that could be leant into and played with in some ways. And this walking backwards necessarily slowing the speed, that capacity to just dwell in the experience, rather than to try to press through or get through or push a way through life in a way. To just be in life and to be supported. I think that we have talked before about is this sense of a quality of participation. The quality of participation elementally felt very strong there, and it makes me think about, yes, some of these turns of phrase around facing up to things, and what does it mean to face up to things. It is a weird sort of phrase in a way – this facing up. And we have also talked before about the turning of the back as a kind of withdrawal or protection, but this kind of turning of the back did not feel like that. It was not facing into the wind, and it was turning my back, but there was something that this enabled that was playful or joyful or transformative in some kind of way. Participating within an elemental interplay of energies or maybe just as simple as just being there then at that particular moment. And somehow disabling the desire to get to somewhere else that is not in that experience, yes, maybe that is a way of saying it. The forward leaning tendency was very much tied into a desire to be somewhere other than the experience that was unfolding at that particular moment, and the shift towards to dorsal was very much an accepting of that situation. In accepting, it kind of opens out. In this pressing forwards, there is a desire not to be in an experience, in my body trying to be somewhere else. In this accepting, and turning around, yes, there is something to do with this quality of the edge between myself and the rest of the world becoming much softer somehow. It is just being in an experience that is much less contoured in terms of “myself” trying to get “somewhere”, and just allowing an interplay of energies. The quality of feeling kite-like. And just letting your limbs and body, particularly when it is windy, there is something about the wind that I really like – that you can just let your limbs drop into the movement of the wind and let go of that sense of motor-intention somehow. To just be floppy, and how nice this feels, this sense of floppiness or letting go. Being held up by something that seems very intangible – not by another body or by the wall but by this air. And also, this is similar in water – being held by something that is not solid in a way and what that feels like. That feeling of being supported from the back by something that has no real solidity and the trust, yes, something about trust and willingness. There is something to do with properties of imbalance – where you can lean, this leaning but without gripping. A quality of leaning where there is softness. Leaning with softness rather than leaning that has a kind of gripping or a bracing or a tension within it somehow.
There is something very elemental about that – this idea of being able to float, or suspend, or be held, rather than have to hold up. And then these moments when that can happen. I would say if there is one thing I might miss of being a child it might be that. Being a smaller thing that could be held by bigger things. The sense of floating. I had a very sudden impulse – to lie down, to stop the flow. As soon as you lie down there is also a release, a not-going-anywhere. And this shift, which felt very much like a returning in a way, to one of our first sessions – moving from the vertical, or from standing, into lying and how, how, in that shift, in that 90 degree shift, what an impact that has on the body. And how it really does, it feels that there is a whole sense of refiguring how the body is engaging in the world. You are turning away from the wind, the face and the eyes are relieved. The eyes are relieved of having to go forwards, of having to go anywhere. Yes, this sense of around-ness, of sides, of things wrapping around, rather than the body forcing its way through. Suspension – physically there is a suspension, but also a suspension of that flow of time, a sort of pause or a hovering before things might move on, or things are dropped. Coming back to this sense of a simple movement like that and your wonderful moment of turning your back and being held by the wind. There is a pleasure and joy – I am alive, on this planet, which is holding me – and there is gravity and there are forces. It perhaps feels more part of the forces that are acting upon us.
Sometimes that pleasure or that joy just comes from not really thinking. No, not thinking. But not a certain kind of thinking. The sense of it not being to do with elsewhere. This greediness of the future-leaning, and wanting more, more, more – I can even feel my hands go out, drawing the future towards me. Like more, more, more, quicker, quicker. But the dorsal is a stepping back, or a leaning back, or a contentment in the present moment somehow. No, contentment is not quite the word I am looking for – it is more like, maybe it is even appreciation. Attunement to the vibrancy of these very particular moments, these very particular alivenesses in a way. Even if they are small moments, that there is just something where, yes, it is just being taken out of that cycle of reaching towards things, and striving towards things. Yes, maybe it even feels quite atemporal, like outside of time somehow. I am trying to hold that quality of sensation that was there when I was leaning into the wind. It lasts for so long and then, I don’t know, it is almost as if chronology comes back. And then that desire to get somewhere again returns. I don’t think it is something that could be inhabited forever. Somehow they feel like, almost like breaks or ruptures or interludes or reminders. A very different register of being somehow. Or maybe they only feel like interludes because so much of the habit of my existence has this future-leaning, grasping orientation to it. And then also the difference in the sense of this imbalance between softening and disorientation.
There is something about stopping the thinking – to move into that sensation and to accept discomfort or pain, not as an endurance thing but to just see, just feel, it is there. There is a dorsal practice in that, letting things be. This word ‘acceptance’, you just accept things through what you perceive. You don’t try to jump ahead and explain it to yourself – something like that. So it is working through the senses, in that way, it is a training in working through the senses and the body, the experience of it. But I do remember a very strong sensation, this sense of interlude, it was a kind of break, coming into …. Mette Edvardsen has this lovely performance – when she says you come into the world of objects. And it feels like you come into the world of trees or the concrete or the studio corner or the dust. This interlude, or this sensation, it is this sense of the break in the fact that we are moving. And more that we are being held by things, and other things can move around us for a while. Yes, you are in a situation. I remember thinking, yes, this is a situation that I am in. This is very linked somehow to how we have been practising. And how we are shaping, how we are shaped by our own movements and how we perceive and how we put ourselves into our own bodies, and into the world, and into the environment. And how we are shaped by that, and how we also shape the things around us. There was something in those still moments where I felt strong sense of this shaping as a process.
Thinking about this participation at an elemental level, how self is felt somehow, and something to do with the border of the skin in those elemental encounters the sense of awareness feeling somehow at the level of this interaction or interplay. Somehow, my sense of awareness is bigger than my body, it becomes part of an atmosphere or the environment in a sense. The feeling of me being contoured by my skin becomes less tangible and there is a kind of spaciousness through this feeling of forces. Something to do with feeling of forces, interaction – the feeling of forces, relational. In some ways it might be described as the energetic line, that in some traditions it might be where the chakras might be, or in another tradition, it might be from a Japanese tradition, to find this place of hara, the abdominal space – but the invitation in the practice was to move the awareness from the front of the body, back, and then behind the spine. So to move the awareness behind the spine, this energetic space behind the spine. But to enter it, by dropping in the awareness from the front. And this was very interesting because there was this, this depth, or this diving or dropping, but dropping – often from lying down – dropping into the body, as if it were a well in some kind of way. Not a physical space in the sense of flesh and bones, but even more like a kind of psychic space that you could drop into. This sensation of dropping into the energetic space behind the spine, but dropping into this from the front, dropping, dropping through the body, behind the spine – and the spaciousness that is opening up there. That does feel very spacious. And that, even that sense of dropping into this sense of the depths of one’s self, there is a space which opens up which is much more than physical space, the material, physical space of the body. This spaciousness opens up in this shift of attention towards the back. The feeling of coming into this space of the back, from the back, you know, even from the sense of tactility of leaning on the floor, feeling the surface of the back in contact with the floor, and coming into the inner back, the inner body behind the spine that way. How is it different or similar to dropping into the spine from the front. And, yes, that resource of spaciousness that is there. Maybe there is something about these two kinds of spaciousness – one, the spaciousness that opens out into the world through a participation with other forces in the world beyond the body, this feeling of movement as you are leaning into the wind, or leaning back, but also this spaciousness that has an interiority to it, this behind the spine kind of space.