The Body: Experienced, Conceptualized, and Verbalized
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Last update: 7/14/09
Som 5201, 3 units, Fall 2009, 207 Mission; W: Section 1, 3-6; Section 2, 8:30-11:30. Restricted to Somatics students: contact; or telephone 575-6237.
DESCRIPTION
A circular interchange exists among experiences of the body, words about it, and ideas. Religious, philosophical, medical and scientific languages shape both our bodies and our experiences. The range of our experiences--ordinary body usage, accidents, illnesses, sexual encounters, etc.--generate and support certain ideas of the body and call others into question. The circularity is often problematic. From the side of ideas: some powerful notions--medical, philosophical, religious--lead one to truncate experience or to neglect certain regions of experience. On the side of experience: problematic personal and social events—torture, death of loved ones, disease, structured practices of exercise and sport—generate limited notions of the body. Language lies between these regions. Lacking careful attention to the craft of words leaves the experiencer trapped either in private worlds of inner discourse or in already-made concepts. This course will be an introduction to methods for wending one's way through the labyrinthine complexities of these relationships among experiences, concepts, and language. It is a basic introduction to the methodological path of embodiment and to ways of nurturing the body's authentic voice, allowing its ancient intelligences to speak forth their wisdom. There is an introduction to the work of some of the early founders of the field of Somatics, and how they developed methods for exploring specific regions of bodily experience and bringing it into communal language.
This course also initiates new students into an unique historical goal of the program which emphasizes helping students recover and cultivate their own voices in preparation for a field in which there will be many opportunities for speaking to large and small groups.
Prerequisites: enrolled in the Somatics program.
Course Objectives:
l. A familiarity with the kinds of experience that you identify as "bodily."
2. How to begin to organize in a thoughtful and communicable manner the complex experiences you associate with your body.
3. How to verbalize these experiences in language that is "more naked than flesh, stonger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve." (Sappho)
4. How to work cooperatively with others in learning and research.
5. How to think in an embodied way and to develop concepts and theories to set you on your long path of being a somatics therapist, and to speak with others about your work.
Teaching/Learning Modalities:
Lecture/seminar: 40%
Experiential: 30%
Practical/applied (Research project): 30%
Criteria for Evaluation (Grading System): O
Punctual Attendance and active participation in course discussions (there are no automatically excused absences in this course): 20%
Quality of weekly essays: 50%
Quality of final seminar presentation: 30%
Readings
Don Hanlon Johnson, (1)Body, Spirit, and Democracy; (2)Bone, Breath and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment; (3) Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment; (4) Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (Bookstore) .
Schedule
Sept 2: Introduction to course: both sections meet 3-6 pm; no 8:30 meeting.
"We have to rediscover, to reapprehend, to make ourselves fully aware of that reality, remote from our daily preoccupations, from which we separate ourselves by an ever greater gulf as the conventional knowledge which we substitute for it grows thicker and more impermeable, that reality which it is very easy for us to die without ever having known and which is, quite simply, our life." Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.
Somatics as transformation: foundation for new approaches to psychotherapy, health, education, and spiritual practice. The nature of inductive learning vs. deductive; experienced-based vs text-based. Problems posed by this kind of learning.
Sept 9: Reading for this class: DHJ, Body, Spirit, and Democracy, pp 1-95.
Brief essay for 8:30 group (1 or 2 word-processed, double-spaced pages are plenty); an event at a particular time and place, long on description, short on speculation and comment: your body revealed through an experience of bodily achievement, success, mastery, .... (e.g., sports, dance, martial arts, etc.) It is fine to include drawings, clippings, collage, and photos.
Throughout the course, be sure to bring assigned books or downloaded texts to class for discussion.
Sept 16 : Readings: B, S, D, pp. 99-142. Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath, and Gesture, ix-xviii; 295-312; Groundworks, 61-79.
Brief essay for 3 pm group, see above.
Emilie Conrad:
Sept. 23: B, S, D pp. 143-162; Emilie Conrad, cont.
Essay for both groups: An experience of yourself as an ethnically shaped body.
Sept 30: Readings: BBG 25-49; 51-64; 65-79.(Speads, Rosen, and Middendorf)
Essay, 8:30 class: your body revealed through an experience of being aware of breathing.
Oct 7 : Readings: B,S,D, pp. 163-197. Bone, Breath and Gesture pp. 15-21.
Essay, 3pm class: your body revealed through an experience of being aware of breathing.
Brief course evaluation with an eye to what might be done in the ensuing weeks.
"This informal procedure is designed to provide feedback to the instructor halfway through the course. The instructor is asked to leave the room for 5-10 minutes while the students select a facilitator and voice their estimation of course progress to date. Their comments and suggestions are shared with the instructor in a constructive spirit. This is also a good time for students to reflect on their own progress in the course."
Oct. 14: BSD, c. 12; BBG, pp. 183-203; Groundworks, pp 15-30. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen:
Essay, 8:30: your body revealed through an experience of the contrast between your "inner" body (subjectively experienced, felt) and the "externally observable"(in mirrors, scales, photos, film, in the imagined gazes of others, including yourself as observer) body.
Oct 21:Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, cont.,
Essay, 3pm: see above.
Oct 28 : Reading, BSD, cc. 11; "Sitting, Writing, Listening, . . . "The Primacy of Experiential Practices in Body Psychotherapy" Be sure to download these and bring to class for discussion.
Essay, 8:30 class: your body as gendered.
Nov 4: Reading: Don, "Principles versus Techniques: Towards the Unity of the Somatics Field, Eugene Gendlin, "The primacy of the body, not the primacy of perception:" Be sure to download these to bring to class for discussion."Elizabeth Behnke, "Somatics" in The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (handout).
Essay, 3pm: see above
Nov 11: Reading: Elizabeth Behnke, "Embodiment Work for the Victims of Violation: In Solidarity with the Community of the Shaken." Be sure to download this to bring to class for discussion.
Final essay. both sections: an experience of your being shaken.
Nov. 18: no 8:30 meeting; both sections meet at 3 pm. Integrative lecture and discussion. Please bring questions and reflections.
Nov 25, Dec 2, 9: Integrative seminars based on your discoveries. A reflection on your learning in the course. You may join with others to create a collaborative presentation.
Possible themes: How have your sense of your body, your notions about "body," of your voice, words and thoughts, been altered by the work during the semester, and by the interaction with the work of the others in our class? What have you learned from the process of alteration? What puzzles remain? Have you arrived at any conclusions about the self, the soul, or the mind? How has the coursework given you a better sense of how you might practice somatic psychotherapy?
For those seeking final letter grades: please write me a letter detailing what you contributed to the course, what you learned from your efforts, questions you come away with, etc. If you believe you deserve an A please make a case for it.
Please read pages 8 and 9 in the handbook "Academic Policies and Procedures" about incompletes: "It is the student's responsibility to request an Incomplete from the instructor and, if the instructor approves an Incomplete, to provide the instructor with the Incomplete Grade Request Form. An "I" grade will be recorded only if the instructor signs and submits the Incomplete Grade Form in conjunction with the course's final grade report."
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