Poetical Ground
English is not my native language. I’m humbly sharing those writings to ease communication and the flow of information across language boundaries… Please be compassionate and receive what those words carry without stumbling on the “mistakes”.
Exploring our poetical ground can be to play with our shapes, weights, volumes, textures, densities, rhythms, flows and sounds.
It can also be to learn to let the words, the sounds, the images, the energies, the flavors, the concepts and the textures surrounding us resonate “inside” and spread.
I like to think (and feel. and trust) it’s to let our intuition lead the dance; arouse all our senses to discover what wants to be manifested. Whatever that is.
But how to learn how to observe and welcome whatever takes form and travel through us?
Maybe by creating a space where we can gain awareness of our current patterns and let them question each others. Observing, feeling and questioning, to create new potentials of being. Becoming curious of new relationships. Seizing opportunities to mix the meaning to get to the unknown. Learning to embrace and trust the unknow (what’s outside our actual perceptive abilities) and be ready to let go of anything that seems to be known.
About me – Vanessa Gagnon
Somatic Movement Educator certified in Body-Mind Centering®
Hold a Postgraduate Certificate in Somatics (UQÀM)
I have a background in Physical Theater and Dance (including studies in France and teaching/directing in Quebec), but will focus on what can be offered as a Somatic Movement Educator:
I intend to open a safe space where we can meet to follow our “own” curiosity, intuition and interests; a space where we can follow the processes. Together, we can cultivate awareness, as well as discover, question, forget and play with what the embodiment of bones, blood, skin, muscle, endocrine glands, ligaments, organs and etc. mean in this particular time and space for each, and the sum, of us.
Embodiment is one of the specificity of BMCSM. It’s different than sensing, visualizing, mobilizing or being aware of one of “our” “component”: it’s being available to his own expressions, intentions, sensations and perceptions; it’s a presence that literally comes from our guts or blood or bones. To me, it’s this inner wisdom that leads to the awakening of our poetical potential. When going out of our usual channel of patterns and expectations through embodiment, we can get access to new ranges of motion, sensation and signification. I feel that it’s from the new signification of preexisting structures, forms and flows that poetry arise and open possibilities.
What is Somatics?
Somatics is defined as an educational field that gathers different practices sharing a common vision of the human being. They consider it as a soma: a self-conscious being perceiving himself and it’s intricacy within the life web from within, rather than a body-mind matrix that can be observed, defined and manipulated by someone from the outside. The pedagogical strategies supporting empowerment and autonomy varies according to the method, but usually imply the enhancement of awareness through sensations and movement; through proprioception.
Somatics is about learning how to be aware of our thoughts, emotions, sensations, perceptions and environment, but not only. It is also about learning how to learn from those thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions. Some people summarize it by “learning how to learn”; this simplification helps to understand the broad avenue of possibilities opened up by the field, as well as his number of interests, diversity of practices and range of benefits. Somatic approaches are usually not therapeutically oriented, although they can have therapeutic effects. Their main focus is to offer the possibility to learn how to widen our range of experiences and possibilities, which include challenging our boundaries and questioning our habits, while caring for our own well-being.
At the core of what may seem a self-oriented process sits the importance of our relationship with each other and with the environment; an intent to develop a global and extended awareness. This empowering process can be facilitated by movement, sound-making, touch, visualisation, verbal indications, drawings, etc.
Contact
For any information, the joy to exchange about projects and ideas, or simply by curiosity, please write to
gagnon.vanessa@hotmail.com
And what about a “non-academic” and intuitive description of Somatics?
Some uncensored and unpolished “free-flow” writing? For the curious, here it is!
Somatics is a way to explore our corporal ground in order to extend our awareness. It’s the joy and the freedom to recognize we’re a whole exploring his subtleties; mixing them, creating new relationships while becoming aware of those already existing, and nurturing the ability to question all of them. Sensations, movement, sound, touch, storytelling, observation; multiple ways to access scientific and embodied knowledge; possibility to discover from within and to hold or let go all of it, to yield to whatever we’re facing or push it away, reaching to go outside our comfort zone by curiosity or pulling the unknown toward us in order to experience it from a safe and secure ground. Just a bunch of possibilities! Blood, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid… Rythms and flows to explore by themselves, to compare, mix, alternate, dissociate or merge, to possibly allow to express their resonance inside and out. Inside the skin, the fascia, the muscles, the fibers, the cells; what’s in what’s out? What’s all that about? A very clever person once told me “(…)you’re the only one having access to this body, wouldn’t you be fool to not take the opportunity to explore it?” It’s our way to sense and connect with universe; our own powerful and yet subtle channel. Embodying my individuality in multiple ways through the tools Somatics offer is leading me to deny this individuality while dissolving into earth’s vibrations. I wish. I wish. And yet, the joy of tangible experiences can override it all. Sometimes. Denying whatever scale to rate and judge thoughts, feelings, histories, experiences, level of awareness, priorities. That’s also what it is about. Spirituality is not superior to flesh nor thoughts more or less valuable than emotions. How to accept everything while still respecting our limits? It’s utopic.
It leads me to an utopic quest and I assume it’s foolish. It makes no sense and is contradictory in it’s own nature. But contradictions, oppositions, differences and denials, as well as full embrace, are all part of nature.
(…)
Well, this is where Somatics leads “me”, not what it is; it can be as many as we are and in as various ways as moments anyone explores it. Amazing, no?
Terrain Poétique 