The voice of her body: Somatic practices as a basis for creative research methodology

Authentic Movement, Focusing, Jungian dreamwork and related somatic practices can create a safe place or container for women to discover the psyche's capacity for the symbolic or imaginal. I am regularly confronted with women of all ages who feel they do not have a voice and cannot bring the creative self into their practice-led movement research. This feminist approach brings together symbolic material generated from individual women's experience in order to articulate somatic, psychological and creative and sociocultural experiences. The article seeks to more fully explore and articulate the application of particular somatic practices as methodological imperative or praxis for arts research. This is a somatic approach to working in educational environments that recognizes the interdependence of many modes of being in the world that can both embrace and move beyond the rational and cognitive.