Reflections on phenomenology, spirituality, dance and movement-based somatics

Abstract

This article shares academic reflections on applied transcendental and existential phenomenology to dance and movement-based somatics. The article sheds light on how phenomenological traditions and somatically informed movement call us into a deepening exploration and care for the human condition, and how this care for life can be understood as an embodied spirituality of reflection and enactment in the world. The article therefore examines how pedagogical approaches in movementbased somatics attend to our earthly embodied temporal life-journey, and akin to existential phenomenology, are actively engaged in potent issues regarding one’s freedom within facticity, situatedness and contingency. Here I provide experiential touchstones imbedded in transcendental and existential phenomenal enquiry, and applied to moving experience. Freedom, a main concern in this article, is explored in relation to transcendence from within sedimentation, acculturation and objectification. Focusing on the primary texts of Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the secondary phenomenal text of Todres, the article is divided into the following sections: ‘Reflections on freedom’; ‘Reflections on time, embodied temporality and the imagination’; ‘Sartre’s being-in-itself and being-for-itself’; ‘Heidegger’s authenticity and inauthenticity’; ‘Nothingness, objectification, self-objectification and its release’; and lastly, ‘Freedom from conceptual rationalism in language’. Additionally, I trace broad connections between movement-based somatics, spirituality and phenomenology through four definitional preludes. My aim is not to provide determinate analysis, but rather to offer a practice-based explorative spring board for students researching and somatically moving within the realms of phenomenology. A further aim is to highlight how existential phenomenology, with its focus on human vulnerability, provides an intimate lens of spirituality intentionally directed towards the contingency of world. Given the emphasis phenomenology places on aesthetics and poiesis, I offer practice-based movement enactments, imagery and poetry within this article.

Music as a pedagogic tool and co-teacher in African dances: Dissecting the reflections and practices of teachers of cultural heritage dances in Uganda

“…My movement experience acted as “the medium of investigation… [and] a filter of data and the means of its revelation” (Rothfield, 2005, p. 49). In my embodied experiences, I connected to Williamson’s (2016) observation that “As movers step into their accretion (mass) of life experience, discovering more about their body’s sediments, feeling-into what the body holds (layers of anesthetized reception), an embodied sifting and deconstruction may occur” (p. 292).…”

Intersections between Modern and Contemporary Dance and Yoga Practice: A Critical Analysis of Spiritual Paths through Body Movement and Choreography

“…Yoga and dance are both activities concerned with the physical aspects of the body, offering physiological, psychological, mental, emotional and aesthetic benefits (Murcia, Kreutz, Clift, & Bongard, 2010;Williamson, 2016;Butterfield, Schultz, Philippa, & Proeve, 2017). In addition, scholars have found that dance and yoga are experienced as spiritual practices that lead to wellbeing and health (Lifshitz, Nimrod & Bachner, 2018).…”

Somatic Practices: How Motion Analysis and Mind Images Work Hand in Hand in Dance

“…Many dancers and somatic movement practitioners will consider themselves philosophers as much as movers. Recent writings (Fraleigh 2015, Williamson 2016 have demonstrated not only how established philosophy (particularly phenomenology) has inspired and informed somatic movement practices, but the moving, thinking and writing contributes to a somatic philosophy that forms its own particular way of being and moving in the world. Hence it may be useful to think of somatic work as a philosophy rather than as a philosophy of somatic practices.…”