Embodiment and Somatics are integral to AlchemyCatalyst principles and practices.
Embodiment
Embodiment is fully inhabiting one’s body. To be embodied is to be present, to be in relation with one’s body as a holistic system of many elements. When we are embodied, we can then also be present and in relationship with others and with our environment; both the physical environment and the sociocultural context. Individual and collective embodiment are inherently two aspects of the same awareness/understanding/experience, yet they are also two aspects in relationship; they are co-created and interdependent.
Embodiment is about attuning to the many sources of information that the body offers, and integrating the elements of body-mind-spirit, which are inseparable but often experienced as separate or disconnected. Most of our lived and felt experience comes from the body and informs the brain — as one part of the body — although the brain often thinks it’s more in control than that. The nervous system, which includes the brain but which extends all throughout the body, is interrelated with the many other body systems — from organs, fluids, and the endocrine system to bones, muscles, and fascia — that together inform our sensations, perceptions, emotions, and thoughts: how we feel in our body and in our mind, and how these are inseparable and interconnected.
Being embodied is about being in conversation with all of this information, about listening, being curious and observant. It’s about being in process, holding complexity, attending to our interrelated inner and outer experiences. As the result of these relational processes, clear intention, purpose, understanding, and action can arise from embodiment — if we start with returning to and being where we are, then we can feel into where we want to go in integrated, generative, and innovative ways — at both individual and collective scales.
Embodiment underlies the creativity, inquiry, and vitality which are the core of AlchemyCatalyst principles and practices.
Somatics
The word Somatics comes from the Ancient Greek soma, which means “living body.” It refers to the innate intelligence of the body; a consciousness that lives throughout the body, not just in the mind.
Somatic awareness underlies embodiment; it’s the technology and practice of being embodied, of acknowledging the relationality of body, mind, and spirit as well as self, other, and collective. This relationality exists within the wider overlapping contexts of sociocultural systems and the living earth.
Somatics is “sensing, feeling, and action” according to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of Body-Mind Centering®. We can refine and articulate our felt sense of the body by learning about the form and function of the many interrelated body systems, and by experiencing this form and function from within through practice.
As we learn to navigate and inhabit this inner landscape, down to the experience of each cell and the body as a collective of cells in communication, we deepen our capacity to connect with and be informed by the conscious body in all its complexity. We expand our capacity for curiosity, listening, staying with the unknown or the question or discomfort. We cultivate our discernment, which supports our ability to both be with what is, and to choose how and what to change. Recognizing our patterns – those that sustain and those that limit – allows us to connect with our power to transform. This catalyzes our individual and collective envisioning, intention, moving toward, living into, practicing, and becoming.
In 1976, to name an emergent field encompassing several modalities (drawing from intersections of science, movement and dance, psychology, spirituality, wellness, and healing) neurological practitioner Thomas Hanna came up with the word Somatics. While this contemporary form of Somatics as a field was at first studied and developed by mostly white-bodied practitioners in the US and Europe, it draws from practices across many cultures which are now being rightfully named and acknowledged. Somatics in the 21st century is a worldwide field, practiced by humans of all cultures, evolved from ancient and indigenous wisdom traditions, informed by scientific understandings from neurobiology to ecology, supporting individual and collective liberation.
AlchemyCatalyst principles and practices engage with Embodiment and Somatics in many ways, including:
Embodied Mindfulness
Embodied Awareness
Embodied Movement
Embodied Anatomy
Embodied Social Justice
Embodied Activism
Remembering Sutra
choreography | performance | videography | editing : Sarah Johansson Locke
commissioned by The Blue Space Project, August 2020
music: “Early Bird” by The Gaudan Project / “Stratus” by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith