Critical Somatics

Critical Somatics is a collaboration between two movement researchers and somatic educators, Sarah Barnaby (US) and Satu Palokangas (FIN). Trained and certified in the embodied approach of Body-Mind Centering® as Teachers, Practitioners and Infant Developmental Movement Educators, our current work focuses on the research of cellular processes, developmental biology and embryology, as well supporting early movement development, which provide essential bottom-up perspectives for how learning and change takes place within various bodies and systems.

Critical Somatics is a bold initiative for delineating collaborative practices that can influence social change, inspired by cellular motions and the ways movement skills are acquired both in evolution and within our species. In the developmental movement work one of the basic principles states how support precedes movement. To have motion, and the possibility of change, there needs to be coherence that holds us from underneath. Each previous skill and its concurrent perceptual widening becomes a base from which the next possible gesture/action can arise. This principle guides our project in three overlapping focuses: cells - babies - community, which mutually inform and support each other. 

These three focuses each illuminate questions of agency, collaboration, co-creation and finding mutual support. By bringing our witnessing to these aspects, we want to tease out new practices that inform the ways we are in the world, how we collaborate, support and affirm ourselves and each other. The underlying curiosity that leads our actions, is how to be an agent for social change - and what can the cellular processes - and the processes that support our movement development - teach us about working together.

Cells

The starting point in our work are cells and cellular processes, and how these can guide our understanding of development as co-creative motions with one’s environment. We want to illuminate how the relationship between individuality and interdependency plays out in layered cellular communities, and how the role of environment/other offers sideways, horizontal interactions and feedback loops, essential for continued self-creation. 

Our organism’s coherence emerges from the swarming of its cells, from its dynamic responsiveness with the environment. The question of self is in constant flow. Perceiving ourselves through our cellular processes can unmoor us from the fallacies of separation, a root cause for so much of our current cultural, political and ecological grief. They are more than just metaphors. Cells provide the living, adaptive and intelligent fabric that holds our questions. We are curious how explorations on the cellular processes can lead our research, and propose diverse ways of knowing and being part of this world. 

[inspired by Geek Nights and Ecosomatics]

Lastly, we consider that working with cells is an act of decolonization and a work of restoring diversity. Anatomy (latin for “cut apart”) as a science, has been traditionally white and male, and its history laden with acts of terror against women, slaves and prisoners. Top-down, hierarchical, and mechanistic perspectives of the body are still recreated and upheld in the many fields of fitness, healthcare and education, but cannot hold any water when the perspective shifts cellular. A cellular view of the body proposes circular feedback loops, fluidity and relationships, which are critical to their vitality. We find in our work with cells a fundamental taking back of power. Power of imagination, fluidity and community. Of being part of the collaborative fabric that holds all life.

Rogan Brown: Magical Circle Variations

Babies

Each cell – and each self – has an emergent coherence that is dynamic and delocalized. Life on every scale arises from circular and relational feedback loops. Organisms are self-creating, self-defining networks that shape and are shaped by their environments. A sense of self allows an organism to relate to, interface with and co-evolve with other selves and the world. Each of these ideas draws from swarming, fractal systems and complexity theory, and they all have implications for working with and being with babies and their caregivers. 

[from Geek Nights with Sarah Barnaby & Amy Matthews]

We believe agency is a given, starting from the beginning: With the support, nourishment and feedback of our environment, each of us grew ourselves as embryos from a two-celled organism into a full-term fetus.

A baby who is supported in exploring their physical movements – touching, reaching, shifting, and pulling – builds a felt, experientially-based support for “grasping” the metaphorical. A baby learns to form and act on their desires and intentions through seeing and touching something, deciding, planning, measuring, moving toward, reaching, grasping, pulling, encountering limits, evaluating, problem-solving, integrating, settling – and repeating. The ability to change, to make transitions, to adapt, and to shift perspective play out first in movement. When a baby finds their way to a new skill through their own agency, they can more fully own the skill and build upon it. A child’s process of learning a new skill is not only about getting the skill itself – it’s about learning how to learn. Progressive, experience-based education can begin at birth and support lifelong learning.

[from Babies Project Principles and Values]

As caregivers and humans in relationships with others, how do we re-pattern what we were taught and perhaps no longer value, and find a different way to relate to the ones we care for – not only because it’s healthier for and more respectful of the other, but also because it’s better for ourselves? What's true for babies is generally true for babies of all ages. How do we best support and facilitate this ongoing cellular unfolding? Continuing with our cellular decolonization, the term involves an acknowledgment and “giving back” of the right to self-determination. Self-determination relates to agency. 

How do we decolonize parenting philosophy and practices - recognizing and respecting baby’s agency? 

Community

Following the cellular model of the horizontal gene transfer (HGT), valuable information can be openly shared and adapted to meet local needs and niches. Collaboration, co-evolution and co-creation are more generative than individualistic or hierarchical approaches, and in this project we hope to delineate ways to practice lifting each other.

A good collaboration is a manifestation of the emergent potential of agency, participation, process, and interdependence.

Work-in-progress. Please do not quote without permission © Critical Somatics, Sarah Barnaby & Satu Palokangas 2019-21