WHERE ARE WE NOW?
By Karen Queller
So, where are we again?
We are passing through a stage of Disembodiment. HERE
In a YouTube video called, "Trying Not To Try", Edward Slingerland describes the disembodied myth by saying that humans think excellence is a result of using rationality and logic as a means of getting through their daily lives. All of this efforting is accompanied with self-control, emotional control, and bodily control, and we force our way forward through this highly controlled and rational path until we attain our goals. This is the myth, he says because we think in metaphors, images, and with our bodies! He goes on to say that a huge bulk of our cognition is tacit and implicit. We respond in ways that go beyond our conscious mind's ability. Our bodies are built for doing rather than conceptualizing about doing. We are a mind-body-soul unit and can't simply be split and confined into being purely rational.
Our agricultural past required our body's engagement and daily interaction with nature for our survival, we were more in tune with our natural rhythms as well as those of the world around us.
We have reached a point in our evolution as a species where this accelerating overspecialization in language and logical thought, along with the immensely powerful technologies and their ecological effect, endanger our survival. There is a loss of balance and wholeness in individual lives and our shared life as a society. - David Rome
Equilibrium
Technology has done amazing things for us, but it has also added to the dulling of our senses and our full embodied awareness. It seems our society went to an extreme with technology, social media, consumerism, etc. and is now trying to find a sense of equilibrium. People are now limiting screen hours, becoming more spiritual, and caring more about the products they use and eat instead of just consuming mass-produced objects, because technology has made them readily available. Industrialization has taken us away from our hands, away from our bodies, and an artful way of being in the world. Why make bread when we can save time and energy by going to the store and buying it instead?
However that numbness manifests itself, its power lies in its ability to show us more of the feelings and sensations that we DO want to have. The road through transformation must pass through acceptance. Only then can we stop pushing against what we don't want, and focus our attention on what we do want. I think we all want to feel vital and alive, but many of us have forgotten what that feels like, or don't even know that it's possible!
It’s about the senses.
Our senses help us perceive our world and bring awareness into our existence. Through our senses, we make sense of life! They provide the physical input that allows us to perceive and respond. In addition to giving us information about our physical world- What an orange tastes like. What the flower smells like. What fire feels like - these sensations are the body's way of helping us gather information to perceive our emotional states.
If we can spend more time receiving these sensory stimuli before allowing that information to become intellectualized and interpreted through our perceptions, we can grow with embodied awareness, operating from a much more basic and intuitive field. In expressive arts, we lean into this 'trick', and help artists grow their sensitivity.
Paolo Knill says, "In Ethnological studies of the arts, we can find culturally different concepts of artmaking that move and touch us in their beauty. To be touched in this way, we need to let go of our habitual ways of seeing and become sensitive to other materials and parameters of shaping" (Knill et al, 2005, p.98). By using what we call 'low skill/high sensitivity. we help artists perceive novelty with a sense of wonder in things that may otherwise be seen as being familiar or uninteresting. A paintbrush for example could be an ordinary paintbrush, or it could be a tool that feels amazing when we tickle our face with it. Trying to hold the paintbrush with our toes instead of our fingers could be a different experience of the paintbrush.
Through our sensitivity we gain personal access to our inner worlds, helping us learn better how to navigate through our emotions rather than feel dominated by them.
Although our emotions are correlated to our movements and sensory perceptions, there are a variety of factors that translate these correlations into meaningful pieces of data. As observers or facilitators, we need to look at these connections from the phenomenological lens to ensure that we are not attaching our own biased, generalized meaning to these movements. Someone could have wanted to roll around on the floor yesterday because they were feeling tired, but today their body wants to roll around on the floor because they want to feel the support of the ground beneath them. Like Markus says, it's important to treat each event as being, person-specific, moment-specific, situation situation-specific. Phenomenology can help us with this.
PHENOMEPHLAFAFFOMAGONY What???
Phenomenology.
Say that 1 time, not backwards. That's it. Just say it once
What is Phenomenology?
“The primary aim of the development of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl was the desire to help others' capacity to respond and to do so as authentically as possible" (Halprin, 2003, p.47).
"The Cartesian approach to understanding the world - is approaching the world as a logical place. However, our experience of the world is not entirely logical or scientific. At a very basic level, it’s very obvious that our SENSES play a huge role in how we interpret the world around us before any of that semiotic stuff comes into play. The cartesian approach says that these emotions, these imperfections in our senses are distractions from the true meaning of the outside world. Phenomenology on the other hand suggests that meaning only really comes into existence in relationship with our senses and our own emotions and our consciousness. Our interpretation of the world around us is part of what the world around us actually means. " - Barbara Hielscher-Witte
The meaning of our experiences only comes into existence when it is experienced by that person. There is no universal truth, and we all come to make our truths. Put simply, phenomenology focuses our inner power on our ability to be in the here and now. There is a plethora of information from our current experience - our sensations, bodily reactions, environment, and interpersonal interactions - that brings meaning into view by our ability to translate this information through our senses and perceptions. Phenomenology helps us bring light to our own lived experience within its present context. It is from this holistic awareness in the present moment that we can leave our preconceived notions aside, giving us incredible flexibility and openness, allowing transformations to occur. Our play range expands, giving new possibilities space to enter into our experience. From this broader place of openness, we can respond and make adjustments as we wish.
Phenomenology offers the unjudgemental presence
Through phenomenology, we can acknowledge our embodiment and our perceptions of the world through our subjective, felt sense of it. Our awareness from the inside out becomes a credible source of information.
“The significance of the phenomenological attitude is that it opens up the world of experience as a legitimate field for philosophical inquiry. One could say that there is in the phenomenological attitude a priority given to experience over theoretical formulations" (Knill et al. 2005, p.22). Phenomenology gives us phronesis, or practical wisdom. “Moreover, the world is first and foremost what is given to me through my senses. All other intentional acts presuppose and build on this fundamental presence of the world. The results of phenomenological inquiry are thus to re-insert the subject into the sensible world and to open up this world as accessible to conscious awareness. Experience, far from being despised as deceptive, appears now as the foundation for all knowledge" (Knill et al. 2005, p.23). Our unique sensations are at the core of all other experiences we encounter. When we know our senses, we can know the world around us. How we go through one experience can often give us clues about how we go through other experiences. By paying attention we can notice patterns or implicit ways of responding to various situations. By anchoring the awareness of these cues inside our bodies, we might have a better idea of how to respond the next time we are in a similar situation.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Several years ago I taught fine arts to kids. I had to go through my training to teach in the company’s style. I learned a few really good things that have stuck with me since...
1. Sketch lightly, so there won’t be marks when you erase. – Basically, don’t be attached to your first drafts and work loosely knowing things will change.
2. Start with the biggest shapes first and let them gradually take shape. If I am drawing someone’s face, I won’t start by drawing the eyeballs and the nose and mouth. I will start with a big circle for the whole face. Slowly as my pencil marks go round and round, this circle starts to take a more defined shape, looking like a more realistic face. If I were to start with the eyes and the mouth it would be much harder to place them all at the right distance from each other, ensuring their proportions and spatial distances are correct. Start messy and let it define itself naturally.
3. Stand back every 15 min. I was constantly reminding students to take a step back from time to time. Changing perspective is necessary to see the whole picture as one, rather than its parts.
I apply these lessons in various areas that require organization in my life. Because of the physicality of these teachings, I was able to embody them not only in the art studio but found that they had permeated into my daily life, making them practical tools. Experiences are not knowledge or concepts, but the embodiment of action going through you from the inside out, giving you your reactions and perceptions of what you care about and what inspires you in your unique way. People want the thrill of discovering things on their own! "[Carl] Rogers used the term locus of evaluation to describe the need for the individual to centre the valuing process within the self rather than allow it to be determined by the perceptions and values of others" (Halprin, 2003 p.49).
So here we are! Remembering how to feel fully again AND use the beautiful resources of this fast-paced, technological, technicoloured, globalized world!
But wait! How do we f e e l things again? How do we come back into our body and connect with our senses, the world, and what matters to us? How do we develop sensitivity? The ability to hear? To listen? To feel? To be touched? To respond? To be human? To be awake? To be ALIVE?
Feeling requires presence, stillness, observing, breathing, slowing down, and paying attention. Connecting with nature and putting our worthiness back into our being-- not dangling it somewhere outside of ourselves to be gained through our accomplishments.
PAYING ATTENTION!
Finding our way into aliveness requires us to pay close attention. When I pay close attention it creates that magical feeling. It's a feeling of timelessness where the complete awe of the simplest things suddenly seems beyond comprehension. When working with clients it is this acute 'paying attention' that allows me to surrender and enter a flow, a feeling of joining with all universal forces. Yes! that's what it feels like!
Paying attention reminds us how to enjoy just being exactly where we are, as we are. It is a truly resource-oriented compass. Shaun McNiff says "When looking deeply at things, we get outside ourselves and become immersed in the object of contemplation. This meditation brings new and vital energy into our lives. We stop running from one thing to another and become completely present in the process of reflection" (Mcniff, 2004, p.57). As the author of The Art of Noticing describes different ways to think about something new he says, "Sometimes that means letting the mind wander; sometimes that means making sure it doesn’t. sometimes it's about finding a pocket of stillness, and sometimes it’s about willful activity in the most unlikely circumstances. Sometimes it means blocking all dictation, and sometimes it means choosing the distractions you want the most. It is about being in a moment or escaping one. Every day is filled with opportunities to be amazed, surprised, enthralled – to experience the enchanting everyday. To stay eager. To be, in a word, ALIVE" (Walker, 2019, p.7).
So Where Are We Now????
Hopefully, you the reader, are starting to understand the qualities that make Expressive Arts useful, especially at this point in our global context. The magic of Expressive Arts is not just what we do in sessions, but how we can bring those tools outside of the sessions and apply them to our everyday lives. To participate fully in an expressive arts context, we must be in touch with our senses, open up to our bodies, pay attention, and be receptive to beauty and curiosity, letting them affect us. Through these experiences, we discover what lies deepest within our hearts.
Karen Queller Is an Expressive Arts Therapist with a Master’s Degree from the European Graduate School. She lives and works online and all over the world. She specializes in play and helping her clients venture out into the unknown. It can be a scary place to be sometimes, but it's also a great place to feel the depths of what matters most to our hearts. She is currently residing here and hopes to come visit you in your part of the world very soon.