Music credit: Clouderr; Downstairs
In these one-to-one classes, I combine principles from Vipassana meditation, mixed dance and creative movement lineage together with guided imagery to facilitate embodied movement with a somatic or inward-focused gaze. The theoretical framework incorporates elements from my doctoral practice research - posthumanist and ecofeminist thinking, as well as critical approaches to mental health. Classes offer entry points into cultivating an awareness of the felt-sense, or sensations on the skin to allow the body to speak through gestures, embodied actions and movement. Once we fine tune this deep listening of the material self, through presence and care, we can then explore moving from impulse, generating sequences and mark-making with a focus on materialising embodied knowledge, facilitating creative process and practice.
Every practice is unique to the relationship and embodied subjectivity of the person I move with. Whilst the somatic, embodied, dance movement improvisation practices I draw from are the same, the application and configuration of the practices may vary according to the needs and particular situated entanglements of the person. I also regularly run group eco-somatic movement workshops which offer a glimpse into these classes.
Three main elements we may work with in these creative movement classes are:
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- Embodying emotions using verbal somatic movement prompts and invitations which may or may not include a movement sequence, with a focus on activating the felt-sense and the body as medium.
- Communicating the inner landscape through repetitive gesture, a movement sequence and/or working with rhythm. While I facilitate the process I may include witnessing exercises, mirroring or improvising with you.
- Articulating the somatic experiencing into words which may take the form of storytelling, creative writing or drawing and talking.
- These classes last 60 min, are available as one-to-one sessions or as part of group workshops, at events in-person or online.
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Background
I completed my PhD with the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2024, which you can read more about here. My fascination with bodymind practices started while I was reading Far Eastern philosophies for my first degree with the University of Malta, between 2009 and 2011. During this time, I started experimenting with various meditation techniques and observing the affects these techniques had on my own psyche, led me to complete an M.Sc in Psychology with the University of Essex, in 2013. I then moved away from academic research and plunged myself into the mental health field in London; working in various third-sector mental health services, across different boroughs and diverse client groups, taking psychosocial approaches to the experience of crisis. Before migrating into the community arts field, I facilitated bodymind practices in a mental health crisis recovery service in Islington. It is my experience of working with mainstream understandings of mental distress, alongside intensely devoting myself to nurturing and growing my movement practice, that led me to take an embodied and interdisciplinary approach to both my practice and research.