Talking to Tremors: Somatics in Dance, Dialogics, and Silence

Source: Somatics in Dance, Ecology, and Ethics , pp 127-141
Publication Date: June 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789387193_8
Language: English

As an author in the field of phenomenology, I have wondered how its insights might be applied to individualized hands-on somatics practices. The following is the result. It draws upon work I did a few years ago with Alice in which she learns to talk to her tremors, making friends with them and moving past fears. She gave me permission to write about this, and is identified anonymously. I explain our work together through notes I took at the time, which I also discussed with Alice. In application of phenomenology, I contextualize our somatic process using Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogics as a recurring conceptual ground bass. In light of Bakhtin's work, the present essay explores dialogic, extralinguistic states of silence and utterance as stepping-stones towards healing – also employing the neuroscience of Antonio Damasio and Eugene Gendlin's somatic focusing process – further delineating changes towards feeling better and becoming well. My background as a Feldenkrais and Shin Somatics practitioner aid this study, as also my studies and teaching of dance.

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References

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References

Bakhtin, Mikhail M.. ( 1986), Speech Genres & Other Late Essays (eds C. Emerson, and M. Holquistk. and trans. V. W. McGee), Austin:: University of Texas Press;.
[Google Scholar]
Damasio, Antonio. ( 1999), The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, London:: Heinemann;.
[Google Scholar]
Damasio, Antonio. ( 2003), Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Orlando:: Harcourt, Inc;.
[Google Scholar]
Gendlin, Eugene. ( 1987), Focusing, Toronto:: Bantam Books;.
[Google Scholar]
Heidegger, Martin. ([1928] 1962), Being and Time (trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson), New York:: Harper and Row;.
[Google Scholar]
Heidegger, Martin. ( 1971), ‘The origin of the work of art’, Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. Albert Hofstadter), New York:: Harper and Row;, pp. 15–86.
[Google Scholar]
Williamson, Amanda. ( 2018), ‘ Falling in love with language. ’, in S. Fraleigh. (ed.), Back to the Dance Itself: Phenomenologies of the Body in Performance, Urbana:: University of Illinois Press;, pp. 78–98.
[Google Scholar]
Yuasa Yasuo. ( 1987), The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory (ed. T. P. Kasulis. and trans. N. Shigenouri and T. P. Kasulis), Albany:: State University of New York Press;.
[Google Scholar]

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