Essay on Embodied Awareness written for the MIECAT institute, May 2019.

Embodied awareness is listening, feeling and paying attention to the  subtleties of being alive. When I am embodied in my awareness I am more receptive not only to myself but to the many passing bodies I share my world with.

I wish I had learned these things as a child, imagining a world in which children learn to live embodied lives, to be responsive multimodally, in ways that abandon language.

This body is my life, the vessel of my senses. I am becoming more aware of the ways in which I am exposed to the raw material of my environment. Forming meaning through the responses of this accumulated bodily knowledge. That which makes sense to me becomes part of me, where I have been determines where I am coming from.

Awareness of the immediacy of bodily sensation in relation to feeling, emotion, felt sense and embodied actions in time, place space.

During this time of covid our sense of relational presence has been warped by a the third eye, the cyber mediator, connecting through a screen changes the experiential quality of our communication, relationality specifically our inquiries. Unable to sense nuances in body language, spatial cues and the vibration of a real shared human experience. 

The invitation to cluster significant works included ISR’s, notes and highlights laid out as  a collection of objects and post it notes. Initially this exercise was challenging, I found difficulties with the clustering process in that there are endless options, so many ways to group ideas. Identifying how they relate or differ always seems to result in overlaps. The time limit forces me to assess the content quickly, I can’t consider multiple possibilities, I decide that I  just need to “feel this one out”. This means moving intuitively through the pieces, allowing myself to connect with each momentarily, feel it, and trust that this body knows how to do this. I create two clusters, unsure as to what they represent at this stage. Surrendering to this embodied way of working feels right, like an ingrained belief system releasing me from uncertainty and questioning. I feel I am listening for a different kind of telling or knowing. After a few minutes I have formed three clusters; one speaks to resolve, clarity or apparent meaning the next is dynamic or emergent and has a sense of fluidity and the last seems unresolved, or suggests the beginnings of something that requires further exploration. I am satisfied with these clusters. 

I share my clusters with my group using simple language. I name them and briefly explain how they formed themselves, that I was but a vehicle of their destination. My teammates share their clusters and  processes and we arrive at a shared theme: “the body knows”. 

We base our collaborative movement on this unifying phrase, discussing and responding to our shared understanding that ”the body knows”. We identify our own individual response to this, mine involves stillness into slow movement through my neck. This process feels fluid, the clusters I have made resonate in me as the individual parts merge, slowly into one single cluster. Form is created through this embodied movement, one that resembles all the parts. 

A technical glitch occurred during this presentation and the image of me froze in a place that convinced my classmates I was holding my body still. A few minutes passed before I realised that I had dropped out and that I was moving alone in the room, unwitnessed. The soft bodily sense of flow I had

Awareness of sensory experiencing

Early in the unit we were invited to step away from the group and engage in a brief meditation focusing on the senses, observing , documenting and responding.

With bare feet I step outside my studio on the cold wet grass, the air is crisp cold and the sky is heavy and grey. 

I stand and listen; to the birds in the pear tree, the traffic rumbling along high street, the cold air moves around my head and in the distance a train passes. About now I have a moment of gratitude for the space and safety of my home. I am drawn over to the nasturtium patch outside my studio door, I walk by this patch daily but today I kneel down to connect. My sight softens as it becomes a blanket of green stars. 

Image 2: Nasturtiums, 2020, Emma Fayelecaun, digital photograph.

I am present here, immersed in this small moment, as my ears, skin, eyes and sense of smell are all focused. I begin to notice new things, there are many seeds to be collected and most of the blooms have expired. A moist scent of the damp earth beneath its fragile canopy rises to meet me, I inhale and absorb the sweet cool essence as it travels in and around the skin on my face. 

I notice the delicate round leaves as they balance little jewels of raindrops atop their tall stems. I take a photograph and thank the day for this simple moment, reminding me there is wonder and perfection just waiting to be found.

Dr. Sharon Blackie talks about how when we are able to be present, mindful and embodied with our surroundings we can feel a sense of resonance, she uses the example

“when you are smelling Bluebell, Bluebell is entering into your body, that scent, the molecules are entering into your body through your nasal passages. Where do you end and bluebell begins? And vice versa. It is trying to see ourselves not as separate, or as a subject walking through an objective world but by trying to see the flow, between us and the world” (Erin Geesaman Rabke (host)(January 28, 2020) Embodiment Matters (podcast) 9 minutes 40. Dr. Sharon Blackie) 

David Abram echoes this analogy by suggesting that “It is not to lock up awareness within the density of a closed and bounded object, (the body). The boundaries of a living body are open and indeterminate; more like membranes than barriers, they define a surface of metamorphosis and exchange. of itself as well as breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, at any moment, precisely where this living body begins and where it ends.” (Abram. D, 1996, p.46-47).

What these authors are describing is almost like an out of body experience when it is really more of an utterly embodied experience. I have found ways of being so in tune with my senses that I am nothing more that a living vibrational being, pure energy, moving and merging with other bodies or sources of energy. When in this mode movement is intuitive and without thought, things are nameless and everything is connected. 

These moments are precious, and hard to come by, as my mind will interrupt with a thought or a judgement, and this is all it takes to whisk me away from this magical place of truth and being.

Figure 3: ISR poetic writing responding to embodiment readings. 2020. Emma Fayelecaun. Journal entry

In her essay on How Our Bodies Become Us, Patricia Violi talks about how “The body does not exist in isolation from other bodies”, she goes on to explain how “one always, and only, has a body that interacts with other bodies: bodies that encounter one another” (Violi, P. p.60) This expansive idea encompasses a descriptive attitude of presence by seeing things as they are, recognising their innate qualities and the energy that they harbour. Not assuming knowledge, classifications or naming. Recognising bodies other than human, all matter and its associated shapes, formed and formless, influencing one another. These bodies speak to and inform my body, as I do theirs. With this understanding I gain a greater awareness of how and what my body, the one thing I can be responsible for, contributes. Over the last weeks I have been considering objects, landscape and place as a living sensing body, one that I can enter into, merge with, interact and collaborate with. 

Part Three

Attending to bodily sensation and sensory perception in intersubjective responsiveness and the forming of intersubjective responses.

Forming intersubjective responses is an exciting part of the inquiry process. The immediacy of this kind of intuitive responding works to connect me on a deeper level to the inquiry, as an inquirer, a companion and an artist. I have come to know that this is more than a response, it is an offering of reflection of what has been shared, heard and felt. It is an attempt at clarification as together we work toward meaning. 

During an inquiry that I companioned I was able to notice where the inquirer’s words landed on and in me. As she spoke, the sounds left her body and entered mine, reforming as words in my mind that held meaning. I noticed where and how they sat in my body. I could then use the essence of this feeling as a starting place for an ISR. I considered the qualities of her words; texture, taste, colour and shape, and from there I formed my response for her. This somatic awareness is not just about the bodily sensations but the modality that calls to it.

I have experienced the power that a thoughtful ISR can hold when offered with authenticity. When the response resonates with the inquirer a shared sense of understanding emerges. There were times when the ISR offered didn’t quite hit the mark, coming across as abstract or perhaps confusing. This is an opportunity to come to know what is not, this is just as valuable as what is. The inquiry has identified something and this is a win, this serves the inquiry. 

Beginning my inquiry with stillness, I trust my companion, I am safe and confident to listen to my body and allow movement. I tune in to the space, reading angles and responding to textures. I soften and allow feeling to emerge as forms, as shapes. Part of my bodily response has been to default to language, I want to free myself of this expectation and move toward other creative modes of expression. 

With regard to moving forward, I have many ways that I envision working; experimenting with movement, sound and voice to make connections and further my own inquiries. I want to  embody my values and connect creatively with my practise as an ongoing lifelong commitment. I have been experimenting this year with technologies that allow me to make and record sounds that can accompany or is inspired by imagery. I am motivated to play with and develop my multimodal vocabulary to deepen and support this learning.

I have created a short sound piece that speaks to these ideas, as well as acting as a bridge for the emergent process that has been this piece of writing.

Fig 4: Sisters (hold your values by the hand) 2020. Emma Fayelecaun.

Afterward I wrote in my journal; “My head and my heart are full, today I have shared a lot and I have received a lot. I am tired and while I am ready to rest, I am excited to start.”

References

Abram.D. (1996). Philosophy On The Way To Ecology. The Spell Of The Sensuous p.46-47, New York Random House.

Erin Geesaman Rabke (host)(January 28, 2020) Embodiment Matters. (podcast) 9 minutes 40. Dr. Sharon Blackie https://embodimentmatters.com/embodying-an-enchanted-life-with-dr-sharon-blackie/

Violi, P. How our bodies become us: embodiment, semiosis and 

intersubjectivity. Journal Of Cognitive Semiotics, IV (1), 57-75.

Egg (2020) Intersubjective response sound piece https://soundcloud.com/moontheatre/this-room-exists-within-me