Dancing exists in my body and imagination even when I\u2019m going about my day-to-day activities not dancing. Its a comfort to know that a small shift in perception towards interception awakens the felt sense, the feeling of being here in body\/mind, noticing my relationship to gravity and space; alongside this allowing imagination into the mix, something changes and I begin to feel my place in the world. What that is, I understand to be the state of dance. It is an immediate wellspring of creative potential where the expansion of the self, a broadening of consciousness, can be made accessible by noticing the feeling of dancing within us, outside us and between us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I understand dancing to be movement in all its forms. Movement without the spark of the imagination can lack aliveness in some ways. Dancing for me is bound in the imagination and in feeling. By feelings I mean the traces of feelings that have meaning for us in some way, be that a sense of passing joy or sadness or an unknown trace that moves through us briefly, these traces can bring a certain kind of attention to the self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mary Oliver speaks so wonderfully about this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness \u2013 an empathy \u2013 was\u00a0necessary if the attention was to matter<\/em>‘<\/p>\n\n\n\n A question to us is: How can our attention matter when thinking about working in healthcare? Cynthia Bourgeault speaks of attention by saying that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Attention, as we normally understand it in the West, is implicitly an energy connecting subject to object: \u201cI pay attention to my driving.\u201d \u201cI pay attention to the lecture.\u201d \u201cI pay attention to my breathing.\u201d But there is also a different configuration for the attention, in which it does not flow in a straight line linking subject to object, but can rather hold a certain tensile strength as a three- dimensional field of awareness. The best way I can describe it is through a beautiful metaphor from Rumi: \u201cquivering like a drop of mercury.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When removed from its container and allowed to organize itself on a flat surface, mercury can either act like a liquid and spread out in a puddle, or it can hold its own shape as a drop, rolling about like a Weeble (the children\u2019s weighted toy that will wobble but won\u2019t fall down). Your attention is much like that. In its \u201cliquid\u201d form, it connects subject to object. In its solid, \u201cWeeble\u201d form, it is a tensile field of vibratory awareness, within which you can be conscious of the whole without having to split the field into the usual subject\/object polarity.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dance, or the movement of health and vitality, exists continually within us like a long sung endless note that\u2019s there, sounding under the surface of things. All of us have periods of life where we can barely hear it, or it\u2019s a distant murmur. At other times we know it\u2019s presence is there and nourishes us in each step. All that is asked of us is to slowly turn our ear towards our own experience and attend to the act of listening to ourselves as we would a great storyteller. This is no mean feat. Learning to trust our body is something many of us were not taught to do. Perhaps through illness or loss we learned that we had at some point to listen to our bodies. To others it\u2019s a new adventure to uncover new terrains of sensations that can become resources for us as we go through life. For some, the task of befriending new sensations\u00a0and allowing the inner world to become known can be threatening, but slowly, slowly it can be a way of re-kindling our belonging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Whyte speaks in his poem The Winter of Listening<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018All those years<\/em> Movement and improvisation can be invitations to unfold our physical body, to unfold our feelings, and most importantly to unfold our imagination and psyche from the places where thought and the thinking life, particularly in illness, may have dominated our capacity to welcome any \u2018new\u2019 sensations images or feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we engage with any art form or creative process we get to be in kairos<\/em> time. These openings can appear when we engage with a creative practice. These openings and fleeting glimpses of our resources, or the feeling of health, are a vital small step in a longer journey toward regaining health and recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Entering the state of dance can therefore be a wonderful resource from which one can navigate the thresholds of change we experience in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The arts can give us another way of feeling, seeing and imagining our life in the present. This present is the way we live, we spend our time living from here, the past deeply informs the present, and the present can deeply inform the future. When working with dancing we are working with what arises from countless complex streams of conscious and unconscious information \u2013 more than we will ever understand, more than we can ever attend to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know that movement and touch was our first language, but many people have forgotten that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Observations on the few still surviving hunter gatherers in Africa, Oceana and the Amazonian basin reveal a great deal of close physical contact between people of all ages. Individuals are embedded in a \u2018socio-sensual human organisation\u2019, which began in infancy during a period of almost continuous unusually rich tactile interaction. This sensual network begins in infancy and continues throughout life. When not in the sling, infants are passed from hand to hand around the fire or similar interactions with one adult or child after another beer kissed on their faces bellies, and sung to, bounced, entertained, encouraged, and addressed at length and conversational tones long before they can understand the words.\u2019 (Konner, 1982, p. 302)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever age we are we still need places of socio-sensual human interaction, even more in those fragile times in older age when the body might not often be touched, in a way that has nothing to do with functionality but more to do with care or meeting each other. Illness intrudes into life, disrupting our biographical experience of time. The ground that we were standing on shifts. The sense of (I) ,our identity, is often in a process of re-negotiation and within that, we can feel a deep sense of loss of control that brings with it questions of mortality, fragility and uncertainty. People can feel as though the story of themselves has fragmented, and been replaced by an unknown story that is imposed due to illness, loss or injury. Perhaps the arts and movement can be a way to slowly re-trace steps to something\u00a0that can be known again. A sense of physical security can support the deepening of a psychological security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deep listening and creative strategies allow us to meet the parables, metaphors, and narratives that shape people\u2019s relationship to illness, but also to health. These stories, how we carry them, and express them through creative acts, allow us a way to make meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The artist brings forth that skill of knowing without knowing. We follow a scent of a creative path that unfolds moment by moment. We befriend uncertainty when meeting others with a sense of curiosity. We have many ways into dancing together and being together but these ways perhaps reveal themselves uniquely to each relationship and in the moment. A \u2018one size fits all\u2019 model of activity will engender perhaps a \u2018being done to\u2019 feeling as opposed to \u2018being with\u2019 \u2013 dance for, or dance with, older people feel like quite different things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an artist I am lucky to be able to occupy a different sense of time when working in the hospital or care home. The \u2018doing\u2019 culture of the hospital means that we artists can offer something else. Perhaps the role of the artist is in being able hold the space of ambivalence at times, in opposition to or underneath the linearity and functionality which a context such as a hospital needs to adhere to. The possibility of undoing the doing for even a short time and carving out a space of \u2018being\u2019 can be vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can attend to the \u2018being\u2019 aspect that takes up another space different to medicine. The goal is seen, but in the distance, and perhaps the way towards it is reached with a different \u2018feeling of time\u2019 and it is this different \u2018feeling of time\u2019 that people feel \u2013 \u2018Feeling felt\u2019 (Siegel)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Where are you from? What\u2019s it like there? What music do you like? How do you notice that, what\u2019s that feeling there? Is that comfortable, warm, or other? Can we move together?\u2019<\/em> Dynamic 4-D ultrasound research films reveal that by the 7th month of gestation the foetal mouth will open in anticipation if a hand comes near \u2013 a striking demonstration that one part recognizes its relation to another part, (Myowa-yamakoshi & Takeshita, 2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Patient L \u2013 palliative care patient:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I stand on the side of the ward and I see Patient L looking over. I look back and smile. She signals by gesturing a hand towards her. I notice this in my body as a space opening up as by these small relational moves, like the animals that we are, we give and receive gestures, sounds, words, postures, and in within fractions of seconds we deduce from these communications the availability of relationship, of safety or threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walk over to Patient L- \u201cI can\u2019t breathe I can\u2019t breathe.\u201d She is obviously distressed. She thinks I am a nurse. Possibly \u2026 she\u2019s very distressed. It\u2019s not necessary to explain anything right now. I ask if I can sit with her. She keeps saying \u201cI can\u2019t breath I can\u2019t breathe.\u201d I notice that I shift my tone of voice and make more space between my words as if it were possible to slow down time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can see that it\u2019s difficult, but I can also see that you\u2019re breathing.\u201d I reiterate something factual, something solid. She is still very distressed and I ask if I can hold her hand. I apologise about my cold hands and say that it\u2019s biting cold out there today, \u201clooks like snow I think.\u201d I ask her if she can feel my cold hand \u2013 an invitation to shift her awareness to the periphery away from the centre. I look out of the window and describe the day, \u201cThe sky is blue and the air is crisp.\u201d She begins to respond a little as we move into the social. She drops down a little into a more regulated state for a moment, then goes back to \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d, \u201dI\u2019m frightened, please don\u2019t leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In somatic experience theory she is moving and pendulating back and forth from sympathetic hyperarousal to something more akin to a parasympathetic state. In polyvagal theory it would be worded as the shift between dorsal and ventral vagal states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some time I explain who I am and speak of my work and ask her about music \u2013 she loves opera, specifically La Boh\u00e8me. I find it on my playlist and place the speaker on the bed. Slowly slowly she smiles and the sound of the tenor\u2019s liquid voice fills the space and something shifts in her face; something shifts in my body too as she seems more settled. She briefly lets some notes, some voice, come through as I sing a few notes alongside what I hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again she settles deeper and takes the oxygen mask off. She begins to talk about going to the opera, and the dress she wore, and I ask about it. In my response I emphasise the good, the resourcing aspects of what I hear. \u201cI imagine that felt wonderful.\u201d There was a process of mirroring and echoing back the resources. Slowly her hand began to move ever so gently to the music and I was aware of only the intricate dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI like this Prayer, too \u2013 the sung version.\u201d She says the words\u2026 ‘And though we are few, we\u2019re surrounded by many, who have crossed that river before and this is the song we\u2019ll be singing forever.’<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Patient T<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A patient in the butterfly room, was at the end of his life. He was in the last stages of (COPD) respiratory failure. I introduced myself, and he began to speak about his physicality \u2013 the physicality of his life, his love of sports, his love of fear, and jumping from cliffs, skiing, his lover at one time who was a singer. I sat and felt these stories fill my legs and hands as I began to gesture in response. As he spoke he sat up and I sat up. We worked with some gentle touch, but he wanted a firm touch, to feel his edges, as these stories of descent and flight seemed to fill the room vividly moving back and forth between loss and anger\u2026 the remembering and savouring of the life force through the felt images that he was calling up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, words have a place within the dance. Words can be like fire to the imagination, and they can be a handrail in a way to support the dance and vice versa. When the cold and dark times of life settle in about our bodies, we can begin to sense that perhaps imagination is \u2018a divine place\u2019, as John O\u2019Donohue writes in one of his poems. It can perhaps become a resource in the darkest of times, a place to call yourself back to. Perhaps imagination can be like an echo chamber for our life, a place where images and memory call us back to the dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Waiting Room:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was seated in a small room, on my placement as an art therapist in a psychiatric intensive care unit. There were 3 patients and myself in the room. I was there to offer an open art therapy session. I sat in the room attending to my own regulation and noticing in and around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw a soft ball out of the corner of my eye. I held it in my hand and then looked around the room as one of the patients looked up. He met my eyes, and nodded. I threw the ball softly to him and he threw it back. We repeated this for a few moments until the third patient looked up and joined in. We kept going with this action, in silence mostly, for around 10 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This particular moment has stayed with me deeply as a point when I understood the necessity for the body\u2019s involvement in co-regulation \u2013 the importance of rhythm, gesture and facial expression as cues for possible safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a palpable shift in the way we were together for that time\u2026 Just for a moment there was a sense that the nervous system of each other could sufficiently soften into more regulated states that could allow a different way of being together, coming into social engagement in this way, through the body. There was bottom-up approach to being together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of my acronyms for my\u00a0work: GRACE<\/p>\n\n\n\n SELF CARE STRATEGIES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I enter the ward I stand outside the door, and I bring in this image:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I imagine 3 candles. I place one in front of the heart, one behind and a light above my head. I notice the light spreading across the surface of my body like a skin of light. Reflecting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n NOTES ON WHAT TO WORK WITH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Projects at CW+ Chelsea and Westminster Hospital: \u2018Meeting Places\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Creative reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dancing exists in my body and imagination even when I\u2019m going about my day-to-day activities not dancing. Its a comfort to know that a small shift in perception towards interception awakens the felt sense, the feeling of being here in body\/mind, noticing my relationship to gravity and space; alongside this allowing imagination into the mix, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/caitomos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/1e697129-19f3-4552-bc62-f3a840641483.jpeg?fit=2048%2C1536&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Iu26-6z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitomos.com\/cy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
What kind of attention are we taking about? What ingredients make up this attention? What are the necessary conditions for this attention to be available or to blossom even, given that attention is like water, shapeshifting to different forms, constantly changing, evaporating, stilling; it can be wild or flowing, and as water is essential for life, so this attention too can matter and can bring about change. The arts allow us a particular attention and way of being with each other and ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Forgetting<\/em>
How easily you can belong to everything<\/em>
Simply by listening\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The word kairos<\/em> was an ancient Greek word meaning \u2018opportunity,\u2019 \u2018season,\u2019 or \u2018fitting time,\u2019 \u2018A passing instant when an opening appears\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every time we ask a question, be it through movement or words, there are small places where one\u2019s agency can be expressed. We can be drawing out the subjectivity again of the body, where perhaps the body in illness and through treatment has become an object. Slowly the body might find its voice and as it finds it voice a slow trust can begin to build. We can support a development of connection, to draw back a sense of conversation between parts of the body so that a map of the wholeness can begin to be woven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I stand on the edge of a lake in Wales, it\u2019s a place called Cregenan. I know the landscape very well as I grew up there as a child. So I stand on the edge of the lake and look over the lake. From my centre a light begins growing, small at first, then it begins to expand. It grows and meanders towards the heart then out of the top of the head, and it grows down from the heart into the earth. As it exits my feet I see the lake slowly begin to illuminate and I am reflected in the light of the lake. As I begin to open and become more porous, I bring in the mountains that surround me in 360 degrees. I notice the container of them especially around my backspace, the strength and stability. I try to hold that light open quality alongside the solidity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nThe title of project was \u2018Meeting Places\u2019 and central to the ethos of the work was the emphasis on the \u2018meeting\u2019 of people through the arts. The interventions offered were bespoke, and were developed through the relationship that prioritised person-centred arts interventions as the means to support patients. Many of the staff and patients have spoken about \u2018learned helplessness\u2019 that can occur during the time in hospital. This project aimed to address and develop patient agency through the exploration of creative expression.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Movement and improvisation can be invitations to unfold, our physical body, to unfold our feelings, and to unfold our imagination and psyche from the places where thought and the thinking life have narrowed our capacity for remembering and experiencing the mystery of the body and all that it brings.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Orienting ourselves to mystery it seems, is the place where we can meet our aliveness if its been compromised by ill-health. There is in movement and embodiment it seems a simultaneous forgetting and remembering of ourselves. The arts offer a bridge in which we cross to meet each other. They offer a way of communicating both verbally and non-verbally, where the ungraceful and the graceful aspects of becoming visible to the each other can be revealed. There is a risk to that, it can be tender and powerful and there\u2019s an awkwardness that come with trying. The arts hold us and propel us into the unknown. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche Speaks of \u2018Shaky Tenderness\u2019 – this is the best description I have found of what it feels like to enter the ward of the hospital and relational field with the patients.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Welcoming and attending to the state of \u2018shaky tenderness\u2019 means that any agenda I might have, personally, unconsciously and that of the institution (known and unknown) can perhaps be emptied a little from me. Attending to shaky tenderness can soften and widen attention so I can become more available to meet the relational ground of the work with as much honesty as possible. Some times in the work in the hospital I can feel like a detective of sorts, gathering clues as to what the \u2018mind of ward\u2019 is in that day. Sometimes it is about hanging out, inconspicuously. Sometimes it’s about being bold, sometimes embracing the clown, often embracing the clown, and often the awkward artist with too many\u00a0bags and no sense of direction. Many patients have asked me on the ward \u2018are you lost?\u2019- and in some degree I am, and to some degree I need to be. It seems that it calls for the artist to bring forth that skill of knowing without knowing. What it to be listening, how creative can this act be? What\u2019s possible in this listening? How wide are the things we can listen to, pick up, follow? What is it to begin, where and when does that happen, with and without language?<\/h5>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"