Critical Somatics: What Do We Mean?
What do we mean by “critical somatics” and why did we choose this term to describe our collaboration?
Let’s first talk about language and defining our terms. If we never talk about or unravel the meanings of words, we will miss the opportunity to unravel the underlying values holding up those terms.
Practicing our critical thinking skills around language -- in general and specifically within the field of somatics -- supports us in recognizing and questioning the dominant narratives and norms which permeate the study of anatomy, movement, and somatics as a whole. The practice invites us to engage with questions of the lineage, acknowledging that words are often unexamined archives of the past, and therefore still have the power to affect our perceptions of the future. Only from there, we believe, we can begin to decolonize our language and behavior of problematic ideas and influences.
We are aware of a previous usage of the term Critical Somatics(1). As with any word or term, newly coined or in long usage, those who use it don’t necessarily mean the same thing, and meanings change over time. While we don’t expect agreement about what “critical somatics” is, we find value in articulating the context within which our take of the term arose.
Language is relational. It arises within a culture, and finds meaning through repetition and iteration. Terms and words are alive creatures, whether we like it or not -- they respond to and reflect their environments.
Can the practice of defining and naming be about playing with the possibilities --- more things being in play allows more choices. Can words and their meanings be more like the best kinds of toys, serving as vehicles for creativity, potential and divergent interpretations. If we could play with words like toys: in dialog with each other, where meaning(s) arise and are renewed, enriched by an openness to diversity and new possibilities.
By using and playing with a term, and by letting the term and our ideas about it change, we support and contribute to its aliveness, and it can fuel our imagination. For us, critical somatics is a generative word toy.
When choosing to juxtapose the terms “critical” and “somatics”, these were some of the things we had in mind:
We’re interested in how questioning and critical thinking might inform the field (and study) of somatics, while personally inviting our full participation in the work. We wish to further cultivate and affirm a need for analytical, intellectual and critical dialogue in somatics, not as an academic venture, but as a deep practice of learning to vocalize the values which frame our actions.
We also want to embrace the many connotations of the word critical:
Critical as in being able to evaluate, ponder and analyse.
Critical as in something being vital and essential.
Critical as in acute and in crisis.
Critical as in the functions of any living organisms, where the ability to respond creatively with and to our environment, via feedback loops, establishes the baseline of health and vitality of that organism.
And even more simply, we wanted to see what happens by bringing together two terms that for some somatic educators are perceived as triggering in their juxtaposition.
While there is a growing understanding and agreement that the somatic field is riddled with the same frictions as any other field of learning and knowledge production - lack of representation, accessibility and diversity - we are still missing specific tools and clear articulations of how to address those frictions.
Within the study of somatics our experience has been that the primary focus of the learning is often with “the material” (practices, principles, terminology). Over time we’ve become intrigued by the values and world views that are passed on, deeply embedded in these materials. Historically this has received less attention, or is considered non-essential to the practice itself. Perhaps this is due to how close some of us (in the somatics field) still are to the ‘sources' of the material, and how a primary motivation of the work has often been about establishing our practices as relevant and valuable. We’ve called ourselves and each other pioneers, and perceived ourselves as working (and suffering) in the margins. In defending our practices against others, we might have slipped into a belief that our knowledge and practices are more special, more spiritual, more authentic, more intuitive or healing. Questioning any of this might have caused ruptures, internally and externally. People might have been excluded or rejected from their pods of practice. Some have gone on and started other communities, because their questions didn’t fit in the previous ones.
What once was a marginal field, cobbled together from an assortment of idiosyncratic methods developed out of personal experiences, where few people were making a living, has become -- with the help of social media and internet, and the intersections between yoga, trauma-sensitive approaches, mindfulness practices and somatics -- a multi-million (billion?) dollar industry. Information and practices that took years to study in the past, are now easily available from the comfort of your own home, especially since the pandemic closed the doors to our studios. This idea that seemed ground-breaking 20 years ago, to have this material available to anyone; it’s here, it’s happening. How many online mega-conferences, each with dozens if not hundreds of presenters, did we see marketed during the Year of the Pandemic?
Maybe we thought that by having this work out there, lives could be changed in the way we had experienced our lives changing. But already with that, something is replicated that has centralized one’s subjective perception as the ideal objective. Accessibility in the sense of freely available is not the obstacle we once thought it was, and it’s not the answer either. The questions that need asking have shifted. We are not going to save the world with somatics.
For us, having spent many years in cultivating our somatic practices and dialogues, having integrated tools(2) and principles, we’ve come to the point of asking: what now?
Is this work a reflection of the same, a replication of the status quo - or a proposal of something else?
Are these tools we have developed and practiced sufficient?
What does it mean to be a “professional” in this work?
Whose voices and “embodiment” are being carried forth as the “norm”?
We have argued for diffraction(3) as a value. We’re interested in embodied practices that create more aliveness, more questions and more diversity. We’ve taken on the suggestion from those who write about decolonized praxis, asking that we participate and engage with the communities we are involved in - rather than keep assuming the questions won’t apply to us, or that the work needs to be done elsewhere. Hence: critical somatics.
Replicating systemic abuses is deceptively easy. Most often it requires nothing more than the repetition of what we have been taught ourselves, remaining blind to recognizing whose subjectivity gets promoted as the ideal objectivity, or just holding an internal hierarchy (and terminology) stable and unmoving in changing circumstances.
We’ll close with more questions.
How much have we focused on ourself within its clear boundaries -- and how little on our self arising in relation to other, entangled with our environment?
Have we practiced (as our work) collaboration and co-creating as much as we have practiced competing and comparing?
Can our growing and changing understanding of somatic knowledge, framed within a broader cultural context, help guide us in how we apply and share this knowledge?
Can we drop the pretenses, acting that we’re special, as individuals and as a species, and begin respecting and restoring the complexity, messiness, richness and contingency of our lived lives?
Can -- and how -- a “critical” approach to somatics be about tending the ground for future possibilities, further diversity and generative dialogue?
FOOTNOTES
1 As we have been made aware via Thomas Kampe on Facebook (Feb 16, 2021), the term and the suggestion for the practice of “Critical Somatics,” previously arose in the writing of Nicole Anderson in 2008. (link to doc, available via Scribd)
Her abstract reads:
Critical Somatics: Theory and Method is a proposal for a new discipline designed to thematize the body—the experiencing, performing, culturally and socially productive body—as the locus of both limitation and novelty, habit and creativity. This paper offers the theoretical bases for such a discipline, as well as methodological suggestions designed to integrate critical awareness with experiential attunement for the student enrolled in a Critical Somatics program. The main objective of a Critical Somatics discipline is for each student to develop an increased awareness of the relationship between his or her mode of bodily comportment, social and cultural institutions, and the limitations and possibilities for choice and change on both personal and social levels.
2 Audre Lorde: The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
3 Diffraction: An optical metaphor for attending to and responding to the effects of difference. (From Barad & Haraway)
