Somatic Education

Just as a child’s neurodevelopment becomes more sophisticated with life experience, somatic psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy, now in their eighth decade, are approaching a more intricate stage of growth. As each discipline grows in complexity, conflicts have risen regarding the concept of identity. The recent debate of whether dance/movement therapy is one of the somatic psychotherapies or its own discipline is a necessary and exciting “growing pain” in the evolution of embodied psychotherapy practices. This paper provides a historic overview and uses a systems theory framework to compare the disciplines with data derived from original and recent literature. Practices, education, and governance of each discipline are presented as they exist in the United States. Findings illustrate the comparison and offer clarity on the current trend toward integration. Suggestions are made for further critical thinking to develop awareness toward an evolved perspective of embodied psychotherapy practices.

How do we share embodied knowledge? How do we understand the world through our bodies? How can we effectively interpret and communicate somatic experiences to a wider audience? These questions emerged during a collaborative research project Let's Improv It (August 2016, Plymouth University), which set out to explore how kinaesthetic empathy and multisensory perception help us to understand our own actions, intentions and emotions, as well as those of others. We additionally questioned the role and perception of physical and emotional touch within embodied knowledge. After a five-day practice-led investigation, a 20-minute improvised somatic movement score was developed with the aim of providing a novel experience of touch and movement. The authors collectively delivered the score and reflected on the outcomes of this experience over the course of a year (2016)(2017). In this paper, we explore how our research project expanded the boundaries of the conventional concepts of knowledge and cognition. We see such participatory sessions, in which movement and embodied experience freely unfold in time and space, as a 'laboratory' in which we examine the underlying mechanisms of collaboration. We reflect on how such an experience can be seen as a creative process, or as an emergent, collaborative artwork. The participants are both the creators and, simultaneously, the audience of our improvised experience. The experience provided a non-judgmental context for physical engagement and observation, which is an outcome that will be introduced alongside participants' feedback. Overall, the project revealed that shared embodied knowledge is highly appreciated, particularly among those without previous experience with embodied enquiry or movement research.

Feldenkrais methods emphasize individualization, freedom, and ease. Ballet methods emphasize perfection and hierarchy, and this can lead to injuries. This paper asks how Awareness Through Movement (ATM) and ballet-two practices that seem to have disparate philosophies and goals-could ever align, given the long history of authoritarian pedagogy inculcated in ballet. By cross referencing my experiences as a ballet and ATM student, interviews with teachers who combine these techniques, and documented research, I argue that ballet pedagogy can be reconstructed with an emancipatory approach using ATM to help disrupt institutionalized practices of body shaming, racism, and elitism. I interview teachers who engage both modalities within one class to imagine what a professional ballet community could look like with critical pedagogy and somatic practice at its core. I propose Awareness Through Movement as a vehicle for reconstructing our understandings of the interplay between race, class, and gender issues in ballet, restructuring thoughts and practices not through dialectic, but through the body itself.

This paper suggests potential areas of dialogue between Body-Mind Centering® (BMCsm) and contemplative photography from a practitioner’s perspective. I begin with an overview of the embodiment process in BMC, and discuss some understandings of the term ‘embodiment’ relating to visual and performing arts practices, including Fischer-Lichte’s concept of radical presence. I further suggest ways that contemplative photography practice offers insight into the specific perception of the present moment, echoing the articulation of the individual and subjective experience of soma (as contrasted to the more general and objective body) within somatic practices.

in The Art of Embodiment, edited by Jane Guthrie, Kim Sargent-Wishart, Heather Hill & Angela Clarke
Published by the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia with the Body-Mind Centering® Association
Available at dtaa.org.au

The concept of embodiment, or the lived experience of the body, has become an important focus of scholarly attention across psychology, sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies. Addressing the inherent challenges of researching the lived experience of the body, this edited volume brings together experienced scholars who conduct and teach embodied research to and establish effective strategies for exploring experience through nonverbal communication, subjective sensory and proprioceptive states, and body-centered imagery. It represents a thorough and comprehensive resource for students conducting research using an embodied approach and for instructors that teach embodied inquiry.

For more information visit: www.routledge.com/9781138367081
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Wandering as Pathscaping, by Vanessa Grasse, presents a practical and theoretical enquiry into a walking and drawing practice grounded in a somatic and dance improvisation informed approach. This is articulated through the author’s experience of walking through two cities without destination, questioning: how to allow a state of wandering, the perceptual processes involved in this state, how these affect navigating, and how the research could reveal an open-ended methodology of practice. Drawing on the notion of ‘wayfaring’ (Ingold, 2011)  and  an ‘active line on a walk’ (Klee, 1953), it proposes wandering as an embodied improvisational practice that engages in a dialogue between welcoming multiplicity and finding containment, as a method to navigate perception, the urban environment and the creative process. Drawing on the attention practices of Deborah Hay, Lisa Nelson and Pauline Olivero it looks at the role of attentional and orientational dynamics in wandering; introducing attentional wandering in relation to permeability and responsiveness to indeterminacy. The extent of our here is proposed as a key orientational process in wandering, in which ground is seen as a perceptual model for the visual and aural fields through emphasizing edges and a towards me perception. Through articulating a walking-drawing practice it then proposes wandering as pathscaping; a journeying that, like drawing, welcomes, channels and scapes multiplicity into a path. The paper moves on to consider how the dialogue between flux and containment was reflected in developing a methodology of practice, revealing how the findings layered into three different modes of attention: Ground-Scape-Edges, Inner-Outer Line, Encounters-Synchronicity. These, combined with a selection of scores, are presented as a frame and an open-ended proposition for the practice. It concludes with the proposal that wandering resides in surrendering to both multiplicity and our here, and allowing a flow of inner and outer attentional dynamics in dialogue with our ground orientation to scape our emergent, wandering and unknown path.

This article explores how the felt sense of touch, as engaged through the enabling constraints of the Argentine tango duet, can facilitate an experience of kinaesthetic listening in the spaces emerging between the dancer's inside and outside worlds. The author's habitual perception of giving and receiving touch as a tango dancer is destabilized by framing a series of somatic experiences in settings where customary tango conditions and assumptions do not apply. This involves experimenting with methods and tools of inquiry borrowed from contact and contemporary dance improvisation. The article argues that, when practiced as a form of kinaesthetic listening, tango is conducive to a process of sensing and feeling together. In this process, it becomes possible to be touched both physically and affectively by the movement impulses negotiated between the partners. This possibility unsettles the reductive idea of one's body as a separate entity preceding the encounter.

This article is a brief response to the issues highlighted by Synesiou’s article in this issue, and Hetherington’s response to the article. Both contributors raise important points but especially the reflexive question of what is a body and where was it when they were writing their articles? Our moment-to-moment felt sense of ‘body’ brings us back to our first person experience, offering a touchstone for any explorations around ‘body’.

Je propose d'aborder la danse comme une parole silencieuse. Pour discuter de cette dénomination d'apparence contradictoire, je définis la danse en tant que parole silencieuse comme un processus  de symbolisation que je nomme métaphore incarnée produisant une énonciation permettant de faire acte. 
Pour discuter ce parti pris je fais les hypothèses suivantes :
1) la danse se situe dans un entre-deux. Elle fait lien entre un indicible, informulé ou informulable et un décible.
2) Le Sensible fait le lien entre ces deux états
3) Le silence es t le marqueur de la dimension Sensible
4) le geste est l'élément visible et signifiant de cette métaphore incarnée

Dans le cadre de cet article je souhaite axer ma discussion sur le premier point à savoir que la danse se situe dans un entre-deux et ce à partir de la fonction symbolique et de l'efficacité symbolique de Lévi-Strauss

This paper takes as its context widespread feelings of anxiety within neoliberal society caused by a combination of material and discursive factors including precarious access to work and resources. It is argued that the state uses 'discourses of affect' to produce compliant subjects able to deal with (and unable to desire beyond) neoliberal precarity and anxiety. Critical education theorists have argued that discourses of 'well-being', emotional support and self-help have gained increasing purchase in mainstream education and in popular culture. These discourses are dangerous because they are individualized and depoliticized, and undermine collective political struggle. At the same time there has been a 'turn to affect' in critical academia, producing critical pedagogies that resist state affective discourse. I argue that these practices are essential for problematizing neoliberal discourse, yet existing literature tends to elide the role of the body in effective resistance, emphasising intellectual aspects of critique. The paper sketches an alternative, drawing on psychoanalytic and practiced pedagogies that aim to transgress the mind-body dualism and hierarchy, in particular Roberto Freire's work on Somatherapy.

Este trabalho reflete sobre a tentativa de desenvolver uma metodologia de ensino para o balé clássico sob uma perspectiva epistemológica construtivista. Ele é fruto da pesquisa de Mestrado em Artes Cênicas pela Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA). A pesquisa descreve e analisa como é aprender uma técnica codificada de dança -no caso o balé clássico -sob outra perspectiva metodológica que não a mecanicista. Para isso, se apoia nos princípios da Educação Somática. A pós-modernidade trouxe problematizações em relação às verdades absolutas em diversos campos e que estão inscritas no corpo. Essas mudanças de paradigma não poderiam deixar de se refletir na dança, mas não em toda dança. A abordagem do ensino de algumas técnicas ainda segue paradigmas mecanicistas, de corpoinstrumento. O estudo, denominado "Balé Clássico -Corpo Consciente", ao incorporar a educação somática ao ensino da técnica clássica transforma o processo de aprendizagem desta linguagem. Pesquisas do uso da educação somática no balé clássico não são comuns, como no caso de trabalhos voltados às técnicas moderna ou contemporânea. Nesta pesquisa, os conteúdos somáticos são trabalhados a partir da estrela labaniana (corpo, ações, espaço, dinâmica e relacionamento). Por sua vez, os fundamentos do corpo, baseados em Béziers, se relacionam com os sete fundamentos do balé (dobrar, esticar, lançar, deslizar, girar, elevar e saltar). Palavras-chave: educação somática; balé; metodologia de ensino; pedagogia da dança.

The lived experience of the body–that is, our bodily sensations, perceptions and behaviors–is the essential ground of human identity. Developmentally, our visceral impulses serve as the foundation for personal agency, guiding us as we move through the world, reaching for some things and refusing others. Our bodily encounters with the physical environment shape and reshape our understanding of the world; we learn about gravity by falling down and discover how our point of view changes when we walk around and encounter new perspectives. Language, often considered a function of our cognitive capacity for abstraction, is laden with meaningful references to the body that hint at its sensorial roots. Indeed, cognition itself is increasingly understood as deeply intertwined with bodily feeling i. When applied to our understanding of the social world, our embodied experience plays an equally important role. As we navigate interpersonal relationships and learn about the characteristics associated with different groups of people, our bodies help to create and maintain the power dynamics that can arise between us–for instance, by signaling dominance or submission through our gestures and eye contact ii. We are categorized into sociocultural groups according to physical traits that are marked as desirable or deficient based on their appearance and functioning. Depending on our social identifications, we may learn to treat our bodies as sexual objects or as instruments of labor. In short, our nonverbal communication patterns, beliefs about body norms, and feelings of connection and identification with our bodies are all deeply affected by our assigned membership in different social groups and the privileges associated with that membership iii. However, despite the research evidence supporting these ideas, existing models of social justice have not been particularly attentive to the body's role in reproducing oppression iv in everyday life. Neither have approaches that specialize in working with the felt sense of the body (often grouped into a field called " somatics " v) offered many strategies for resolving the tension between the information available to us through bodily explorations of sensation and movement and the data grounded in social power and authority. However, it is possible to address the singular experience of the body in a way that does not bypass the political. Conversely, it is possible to work collectively to transform oppressive social structures while fully recognizing the micro-sociological building blocks that maintain those structures. An embodied approach to social justice–one that recognizes the degree to which our bodies are implicated in the reproduction of social power–should not be considered a replacement for working on the macro-sociological level to make structural and ideological changes in social institutions such as education or healthcare, or as a substitute for legislative reform. Rather, it works to support change in the relational fabric of our lives so that structural shifts correspond with authentic transformations in attitude, and where legal rights and freedoms are experienced at the core of our beings and manifested in our everyday interactions with others.

Introduces the role of neuromaturational and dynamical systems theory in child development and ensuing adult movement behavior. Highlights the work of physical therapist, Irmgard Bartenieff (1900 - 1982) and occupational therapist Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and the development of the somatic movement systems:  Bartenieff Fundamentals and Body-Mind Centering, respectively.  Compares and contrasts these two systems of human movement analysis and their perspectives in intervention with children and adults.  Shares Dr. Eddy's unique blend of these two systems in Dynamic Embodiment Somatic Movement Therapy.  Provides charts of different views of body organization and neuro-developmental organization in embryological and infant motor planning, as well as the reflex theory related to adult performance.  Also includes additional charts from the pedagogy of colleague Rachelle Tsachor.

The human embryo creates a body without a brain. Just how it does this, remains mysterious. While advances in science and technology afford scientists a privileged view of developmental changes in vivo, the embryo's dynamic growth patterns remain ill-defined. As Embryologists aligned with Goethean Science and Anthroposophy, another perspective has evolved: Phenomenological Embryosophy. Basic to this discourse is the concept that all biological organization and development is intelligent and metaphysical throughout the developmental timeline. Somatic education (Somatics) shares this holistic concept. Somatics is a living philosophy as well as an empirical approach to understanding the lived and living body through conscious movement practice. Throughout the 20 th Century, Somatics spawned multiple movement practices, pathways to an embodied understanding of human potential and relational depth. Developmental movement has been critical to this study. In this article, the author draws from her personal engagement with Somatics, highlighting parallels between embryosophical theory and somatic practice. To illustrate key relationships, the author describes elements of her personal practice-based research called human origami. Human origami is an improvisational exploration of bodily folding. The inspiration came from French phenomenologist Gilles Deleuze who wrote extensively on the aesthetics of folding. Beyond the particulars of Deleuzian Phenomenology, human origami offers a means of re-enacting one's biological history through mindful movement practice. Here, elements from one practice session are described: the embryonic phase of gastrulation (the formation of the primitive streak and consolidation of the axial midline). The practice is informed and affirmed by trans-disciplinary studies in dance phenomenology, fractal biology and embodied cognitive science. Human origami ultimately aims to obliterate artificial 2 International Journal of Prenatal & Life Sciences, www.journalprenatalife.com divisions between theory and practice in underscoring the impact of prenatal processes on lifelong health and wellbeing.

Just as a child’s neuro-development becomes more sophisticated with life experience, somatic psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy, now in their eighth decade, are approaching a more intricate stage of growth. As each discipline grows in complexity, conflicts have risen regarding the concept of identity. The recent debate of whether dance/movement therapy is one of the somatic psychotherapies or its own discipline is a necessary and exciting ‘growing pain’ in the evolution of embodied psychotherapy practices. This paper provides a historic overview and uses a systems theory framework to compare the disciplines with data derived from original and recent literature. Practices, education and governance of each discipline are presented as they exist in the United States. Findings illustrate the comparison and offer clarity on the current trend towards integration. Suggestions are made for further critical thinking to develop awareness towards an evolved perspective of embodied psychotherapy
practices.

The domain of Interaction Design (IxD) strives for rich interactions yet continues to work with both a shallow definition of gestalt experience and a meager palette of experiential variables from which to pull. The presence of the body in human experience is noted, but poorly understood or utilized when making design moves. Through a turning of attention to the visceral variables of experience, this thesis presents the first comprehensive definition and taxonomy of Soma Literacy to reveal an expanded palette of variables to the design fields. Interventions into worlds through such a tactile and personal lens challenge many entrenched beliefs and reframes the very nature of interaction and experience. This new framing and set of priorities applicable to designing for engagement of the felt-sense provides both a timely provocation, and a much-needed practical aid to designers and educators.
Influenced by interaction aesthetics, somaesthetics, pragmatic philosophy, and the theoretical and pedagogical principles of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s Eurhythmics, I present the sentient body (soma) as the core of experiential perception. I introduce the soma tier of experience and discuss to what extents Design can offer interventions to reveal, nudge, magnify, or diminish experiential gestalts through the manipulatible variables of the soma tier, thus offering interaction design not just a renewed and expanded palette, but also a clarification of the fundamental palette of human interaction factors. The human experience is analog. It is the actual, visceral, flesh and bone, breathing, beating body that is the only translator of experience that we possess. It is only through this lens that we might come to know and thereby design meaningful interactions.
This thesis re-presents the feeling body as the single fundamental constant for IxD, a playground for all participation, engagement, and felt-experience. Soma Literacy is introduced as an encompassing and organizing field of study that frames this renewed attention and offers a path to analyze, interpret, reveal, and make meaning through the bodied content present in experience.

Keynote address at the Healthy Houses/Healthy Interiors conference 2011, Bratislava University, Slovakia

Green and sustainable design talks about the protection of natural resources, about designing in harmony with nature. But we must not forget that we are nature too. Before we start designing we study and observe the natural and built environment. We must not forget to engage our senses and learn to listen with our bodies as well.  “We need to think with sensations in our muscles” ~ Albert Einstein.

This book describes the theory and methods of an original somatic approach to movement education. Based on the five Elements of ancient philosophical tradition, Elemental Movement integrates somatic and alchemical principles, processes, and practice. It employs movement as the primary vehicle for a wide range of personal explorations, using the Elements both as a framework and as a set of symbolic tools.

Research has established the crucial role of the body in navigating experiences of social difference and mediating the traumatic impact of oppression. Although conceptual frameworks from education, counseling, and critical embodiment studies offer powerful lenses through which
to view these experiences of oppression, existing social justice models (e.g., anti-oppressive education, multicultural counseling and social work) are insufficiently inclusive of the body’s role in navigating oppressive social interactions. Conversely, existing models of working with embodied experience (e.g. somatic education and somatic counseling/psychotherapy) are insufficiently attentive to the role of social power in interpersonal relations. Drawing on current research on the embodied experience of oppression, this paper articulates an integrative model for addressing problematic experiences in relation to the body and social justice.

Este documento, dirigido a aquellos interesados en la educación, la creación y la presentación de la danza, además de otras artes y técnicas que impliquen el trabajo con el cuerpo, se trata de un análisis de las distintas formas de comunicación que tienen como fin provocar estados de movimiento. Se sugieren diversas herramientas por las que puede optar un profesor de danza, un coreógrafo y, en sentido amplio, un educador o artista que trabaje con la dirección del movimiento. La investigación trata de ampliar el campo de estudio ya que encuentra que sus contenidos no se concentran únicamente en la danza. De esta manera, el enfoque no se reduce a una sola óptica, sino que abre su espectro con un carácter incluyente. La base conceptual de la investigación es la educación somática; se analizan varias modalidades somáticas y su relación con la danza y la indicación del movimiento. Los sistemas somáticos promueven la importancia de estimular la cinestesia para fomentar la reeducación del sistema nervioso; entre ellos se destaca la Técnica Alexander, cuyos principios pueden preparar, tanto al maestro como al estudiante, para que entren en estrecha relación con su propio cuerpo y la dinámica de alineamiento. Entre las principales Cuad. Músic. Artes Vis. Artes Escén., Bogotá, D.C. (Colombia), 3 (1): 105-159, Octubre 2006-Marzo 2007. © 2006 Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. * Rosana Barragan Olarte trabajó como profesora de la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad Javeriana por varios años. Actualmente trabaja como artista independiente en los Estados Unidos y esta vinculada al Latin Ballet of Virginia. * * Este documento es el resultado de un proceso de investigación desarrollado gracias a la Beca Nacional de Investigación en Danza 2006 del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia. Consultor de la Investigación: Bobby Rosenberg (único maestro certificado de la Técnica Alexander en Colombia, autor, investigador y profesor universitario). Tutor de la Investigación: Gilberto Bello (maestro e investigador universitario en Colombia).

Sacrifice, Soma, and Spontaneity: Partners in an Integrative Psychology. Literature review looks at the anthropology of sacrificial process, the phenomenology of sacred space, and the sacrificial dimensions of archetypal psychology. Research examines how gender may impact the construction and expression of sacrifice in establishing transformative space.

RESUMO
Este texto aborda aspectos comuns e especificidades entre os princípios do método Body-Mind
Centering (BMC), de Bonnie Baindbridge Cohen, a partir do Sistema de Análise de Movimento
de Rudolf Laban/Bartenieff, e os princípios da Euritmia Artística, criada por Rudolf Steiner. O
objetivo é compreender como esses princípios, identificados aqui como somático-performativos,
podem contribuir para o autodesenvolvimento do performer e do educador em arte.
RESUMO
Este texto aborda aspectos comuns e especificidades entre os princípios do método Body-Mind
Centering (BMC), de Bonnie Baindbridge Cohen, a partir do Sistema de Análise de Movimento
de Rudolf Laban/Bartenieff, e os princípios da Euritmia Artística, criada por Rudolf Steiner. O
objetivo é compreender como esses princípios, identificados aqui como somático-performativos,
podem contribuir para o autodesenvolvimento do performer e do educador em arte.
RESUMO
Este texto aborda aspectos comuns e especificidades entre os princípios do método Body-Mind
Centering (BMC), de Bonnie Baindbridge Cohen, a partir do Sistema de Análise de Movimento
de Rudolf Laban/Bartenieff, e os princípios da Euritmia Artística, criada por Rudolf Steiner. O
objetivo é compreender como esses princípios, identificados aqui como somático-performativos,
podem contribuir para o autodesenvolvimento do performer e do educador em arte.
RESUMO
Este texto aborda aspectos comuns e especificidades entre os princípios do método Body-Mind
Centering (BMC), de Bonnie Baindbridge Cohen, a partir do Sistema de Análise de Movimento
de Rudolf Laban/Bartenieff, e os princípios da Euritmia Artística, criada por Rudolf Steiner. O
objetivo é compreender como esses princípios, identificados aqui como somático-performativos,
podem contribuir para o autodesenvolvimento do performer e do educador em arte.

Self-care is fundamental to mental health practitioner training and professional efficacy.  Expressive writing about stressful events has been researched and shown to have positive physical and psychological effects. Mindfulness, an embodied approach to clinical practice and education, has also been studied and documented as an effective self-care approach.  Embodied education integrates experiential history with current learning, which may influence future practitioner performance and client outcomes.  This self-care exercise is designed to promote awareness and acceptance among counselors and counselors-in-training, as well as among clients, through use of a mindfulness-oriented written self-disclosure task that may facilitate meaning-making, and may enhance psychological well-being and therapeutic efficacy.  It aligns with CACREP and ACA Code of Ethics standards addressing counselor self-care as a necessary facet of ethical practice.

Movement sonification is an ongoing area of artistic research attracting the interest of musicians, technologists and movement practitioners. Similarly, mobile phones are frequently used in artistic contexts. By discussing Sonolope, a mobile phone application that enables the production of quadrophonic sound through the user's movement in the space, this article aims to contribute to existing scholarship by examining the experience of sound and movement co-production in relation to the sensory modalities that underpin mobile phone use and through a set of philosophical accounts that focus on listening. It will be argued that Sonolope, as well as similar systems of movement sonification, can offer a third category of experience and analysis that transcends the existing binaries between external appearance and internal sensation, image and proprioception. It is thus intended to examine sound as an integral part of the user's experience within movement sonification, and position such an experience in relation to somatic practice, mobile phone use and a wider philosophical project of developing a 'sonorous subject'.

In the text, it is discussed some aspects on somatics in contemporary times, from the starting point of its technical and conceptual basis, clarifying premises and applications, as well as misunderstandings and restrictions. Some aspects include: conceptual, historical, and technical origins; common premises and principles developed by diverse somatic techniques; the difference between somatic technique, method, and approach; transculturality, decolonization, and repatterning; Somatic Attunement and Wisdom; institutionalization in technical and/or academic courses; somatics as autonomous field of therapy, education, aesthetics, and research; somatics as practice as research; somatic-performative research.

In this paper, I examine definitions of and relationships between violence, oppression, peace, liberation, and embodiment in the context of critical pedagogy in order to construct a theory of critical embodied praxis for social justice and peace educators. Considering the body to be a tangible vessel through which narratives and mechanisms of violence are expressed and maintained, I explore the potential of the body to be a vessel through which liberatory narratives may be generated and shared. After constructing a theory of critical embodied praxis, I illustrate this framework in action through a personal narrative that explores the intersections of my diasporic Jewish and settler identities as they pertain to my work as a critical place-based educator. This analytic narrative tracks my holistic development over the course of several years, indicating the role of critical embodied praxis in my entwined personal and professional transformations. Bridging the fields of social justice education, peace education, conflict transformation, critical studies, trauma studies, and somatics in a cohesive pedagogical framework, I offer critical embodied praxis as a useful practice for anyone committed to critical pedagogy and/or interested in the healing and liberatory capacities of learning and education.

Keywords:  critical pedagogy, embodiment, somatics, trauma healing, social justice education, peace education, Jewish identity, settler colonialism, place-based education

Is Pilates a Somatic Education Method? – This paper renews the discussion about the relevance of the Pilates method to the field of Somatic Education. The impact of marketing – which sells the method as a fitness activity – and the academic research on the application of the method in the treatment of various medical disorders, as well as its role in the construction of contemporary dance aesthetics, are put into perspective.

. Trabajo final de graduacion para optar por el grado de licenciatrua en Artes Escenicas de la Unievrsidad Nacional de Costa Rica 2012. Investigacion performatica sobre el estado de trance desde una perspectiva del performance y el teatro postdramatico investigando procesos de cura intra e interpresonales del creador-interprete

Bridging dance anthropology and multimodal discourse analysis, the article focuses on language used to teach and/or describe various versions of the pas de basque step in Highland, Scottish country, Scottish step and "called" Ceilidh dancing of Scotland. It analyses pedagogic discourse observed during on- and offline classes and dance events across the globe alongside the author's own embodied experience as a Scottish dancer, learner and teacher. When examining culturally and somatically contextualised uses of English in Scottish dance pedagogy, the article takes into account a range of dance manuals and instructions published between 1950 and 2020 by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, the Royal Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing, the United Kingdom Alliance of Professional Teachers of Dancing and other organisations and individuals. Revisiting issues of communicating (and delegating) authority, (re)shaping the dance tradition(s) and providing/refraining from regulation, the study is aimed at helping to better appreciate the mutual interconnectedness between pedagogic discourse, on the one hand, and dance learning and teaching as an embodied social and cultural experience, on the other.

As abordagens somáticas se encontram amplamente disseminadas nos processos pedagógicos das artes da cena, tanto por promoverem bem-estar e saúde corporal, como por fomentarem diferentes maneiras de aproximação do corpo e sua expressividade. No entanto, ainda persiste a convenção de que elas contribuem somente na preparação do corpo e no desenvolvimento da consciência corporal, negligenciando-se seu potencial como agente propositor e criador. Dessa maneira, se mantêm restritas a um papel apenas complementar nas práticas criativas das artes da cena. Explanando sobre sua função e problematizando a posição que ocupa nas práticas e vivências artísticas da atualidade, esse artigo visa ampliar e adensar o entendimento das abordagens somáticas, a fim de alargar os modos de aplicá-las nas artes da cena da contemporaneidade. Para tanto, propõe-se uma discussão entre os filósofos Merleau-Ponty e Michel Bernard sobre o conceito de corporeidade, articulando-a com a noção de ética de Spinoza.

O artigo parte do princípio de que a educação somática articula questões próximas aos estudos da percepção tanto das ciências cognitivas como da filosofia. Indica que as abordagens somáticas podem ampliar sua área de atuação e transbordar sua função inicial de manutenção da saúde e melhora da qualidade técnica para habitar o campo da pesquisa e da criação em dança. A fim de estreitar a relação entre educação somática e dança, busca-se abordar alguns princípios do estudo da Coordenação Motora de Béziers e Piret e apontar seus possíveis desdobramentos no processo de investigação e criação em dança via percepção.