Dances with Sheep
Dances with Sheep (Book)
On RePairing the Human–Nature Condition in Felt Thinking and Moving towards Wellbeing
Felt thinking is a body-based way of working with movement in somatic experience of the ecologically inclusive sense of self. Dances with Sheep presents the multitude of personal journeys which bring the lived connections between Nature and the self to the fore and offers new insights into how to remedy multiple imbalances. 68 b/w and 8 col. illus.
Edition
Dances with Sheep presents the methodology of Felt Thinking in Movement as an eco-somatic practice inspired by re-thinking nature of being human, as well as contextualises it within wider frameworks of cultural, philosophical and therapeutic viewpoints on wellbeing.
Felt Thinking is a self-inquiry practice grounded in somatic movement experience that originates in site-specific and embodied dialoguing between what is felt and what shapes as a responsive thought, as creative movement itself, and which paths ways for ecologically inclusive care for being well with self and other.
The book elaborates on creative processes in and with the natural environment in relation to the movers’ overall wellbeing and covers creative journeys of opening up to the living agency of Nature itself through the emergent three phases of experiential relatedness in embodied experience of the self. The book presents its original contribution to eco-phenomenology with its ontological principle of embodied relationality in towards and away from movement as a primal gateway to wellbeing and its creative inter-constitution.
An intriguing and inspiring resource for students, practitioners, educators, self-learners, therapists and researchers. Foreword by Sondra Fraleigh.
Anna is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist and a board member of the Association for Somatic Movement Dance Therapies UK, with nearly 20 years of experience working with dance, movement and creative arts. Anna’s experience stretches from dance research, dramaturgy and site-specific productions. Anna is the founder and director of Dunami - Movement, Arts, Wellbeing, a platform for ecologically mindful growth, psycho-somatic health and artistic development. As a writer, she focuses on practice-based research, ecopsychology and environmental philosophy perspectives.
Foreword: Dancing with Sheep and Paradox
Sondra Fraleigh
Acknowledgements
Summary
List of Figures
Terminology
Preface
SECTION ONE – OPENINGS AND CONTEXTS
Introduction: Contemplating Ecological Belonging in Somatic Felt Thinking
- From Living Practices to Practicing Life: A Bitter Pill to Swallow
- Moving towards Wellbeing: On Change and Continuity in ‘Being With’ Experience
- Historical and Cultural Contexts of Relationality
- Therapeutic and Philosophical Contexts of Wellbeing
- Ecological Contexts of Somatic Movement Experience
- On Somatic Ontologies of Human Nature and its Day-to-Day Dimension
- Felt Thinking and Languaging the Experience
- The Three Dimensions of Felt Thinking and their Embryological Correspondence with Time/Space Experience
SECTION TWO – THE PRACTICE OF FELT THINKING IN MOVEMENT
I. Moving with Receptivity and Sensuous Co-Presence in Physical Time, or On Where and When of Being
9. In and Out
10. Now and Then
11. The Shared and the Unique
12. The Temporal and the Infinite
13. Reflective Synopsis: Moving Towards Sensual Co-Presence
14. Connecting with the Land - Stories in Sensuous Receptivity
II. Moving with Responsiveness and Experiential Exchange in Psychological Time, or On Who and What of Being
15. Voicing and Silencing
16. Moving and Not Moving
17. Fast and Slow
18. Purpose and Willingness
19. Being and Letting Be
20. Reflexive Synopsis: Moving Towards Experiential Openness
21. Co-Creating with the Land – Stories in Experiential Responsiveness
III. Moving with Responsibility and Insightful Intuiting in Primordial Time, or On Why and How of Being
- Multi-dimensionality and Permeability in Movement
- Feeling with the Land – Stories in Insightful Responsibility
SECTION THREE – DISCUSSION AND DEVELOPMENTS
- Felt Thinking and Moving Towards Inclusive Wellbeing Practice
- Felt Thinking and the Embodied Experience of Time/Space and its Cultural Implications
- Felt Thinking as Green Awakening and its Wider Philosophical Implications
- Felt Thinking and the Concept of Temporality
- Felt Thinking and Nature as Wholeness
- Felt Thinking and the Cycle of Life
- Felt Thinking as Living Philosophy in Practice
Rounding Up, Open Thoughts
Glossary
References
About the Author
